Communist Party of India-Marxist politburo member and former general secretary Prakash Karat filed an FIR against Derek O Brien, chief national spokesperson of the Trinamool Congress, with Delhi police on Sunday for allegedly morphing his photographs.
Derek, while addressing a press conference in Kolkata on Saturday, had released a few pictures which showed CPI(M) leaders including Karat and Sitaram Yechudi getting closer to top leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
One of the pictures showed that Home Minister Rajnath Singh offering sweets to Karat. “This is my favourite picture,” Derek had told media.
Karat lodged a complaint with Mandir Marg police station in Delhi on Sunday morning. “I was surprised to see this. I did not have any opportunity to meet Mr Rajnath Singh, union home minister. It comes under cyber crime,” Karat said. BJP has also has lodged a complaint with Kolkata police against Derek and some other leaders.
Sidhartha Nath Singh, national secretary of the BJP in charge of Bengal, posted the original picture which showed that Singh was actually offering sweets to Narendra Modi when the latter was elected prime minister candidate by BJP parliamentary committee.
CPI(M) politburo member Biman Bose, said, “If a cartoonist could be arrested by Mamata just forwarding a cartoon, then why not Mr Derek?”
The Trinamool subsequently admitted that the picture was photoshopped and removed it from its website.
"Two videos and six pictures were shown at our press conference. We removed one pic immediately when our research team learned it was photoshopped," the Trinamool said on its official Twitter account, which was retweeted by Derek.
Two videos & 6 pics were shown at our press conference. We removed one pic immediately when our research team learnt it was photoshopped
— AITC (@AITCofficial) April 23, 2016
Derek in a video message on his Facebook admitted it was a mistake and sought to "end the chapter".