Mamta Banerjee's picture presenting World Cup trophy to Lionel Messi is morphed

A post with an image of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee presenting the FIFA World Cup 2000 trophy to football legend Lionel Messi is circulating on social media.

Bangla caption translated to English reads: "The whole world witnessed a historical moment. Sister (Mamata Banerjee) herself handed over the cup to Messi. Blue and white mixed the two ends of the world)".

The user said Mamta Banerjee presented the trophy in the grand finale of the recently held FIFA World Cup.

Against the backdrop of the recent victory of Argentina, the image is being widely circulated in the Bengal region.

Fact check

NewsMeter ran a keyword search on Google using the phrase 'Lionel Messi accepting FIFA World Cup finale trophy' and found a similar image on the web.

The viral image was published by a sports website 'SKY SPORTYS' titled 'Lionel Messi: Argentina captain wears traditional Arab cloak to lift World Cup trophy. We found that in the original picture, Mamta Banerjee's has been superimposed. The image of FIFA president Gianni Infantino has been cleverly removed.

Moreover, we could not find any media reports reporting the presence of Mamta Banerjee in the FIFA World Cup 2022 finale or presenting any trophy.

The viral image is morphed. FIFA president Gianni Infantino was digitally replaced with Mamta Banerjee in the viral image.

To make it easy, we have a comparison picture below.

Hence, the claim is false.