Has Bollywood villain and real-life hero Sonu Sood been taken for a ride for the family of a Chittoor farmer who claimed to have forced his daughters to till his land?
It appears so, following a statement from the local mandal officers on Monday, a day after the media and the opposition parties went ga ga over the magnanimity displayed by Sonu Sood in donating a brand new tractor to the family.
“The media reports that the family is impoverished and could not afford to engage oxen or a tractor to plough the field is absolutely false,” mandal parishad development officer of K V Palle mandal said in the statement.
He said the family had voluntarily done it.
“I was informed that the family wanted to have the experience as a sweet memory. The family have confessed that they never expected the issue would take such a turn,” he said, adding that the family came to their native village for a temporary stay.
The pictures of two young sisters – Vennela and Chandana, daughters of Veerathallu Nageshwara Rao of Mahalrajuvaripalle village, pulling the plough while their father holding the blades and their mother spraying groundnut and toor dal seeds went viral in the social media.
While Nageshwara Rao is a tea stall owner at Madanapalle town, his daughters are studying Intermediate second year and Class 10 respectively. The family, which faced troubles due to lockdown, came to the village to do farming.
As the pictures went viral in the social media and a TV channel reporter tweeted it tagging Sonu Sood, the actor responded quickly.
He first offered to buy two bulls for them, but later changed his mind and sent a tractor for the family to plough the field.
As the pictures of the family posing with the new tractor were flashed in the media, the government ordered an inquiry and found that it was a planted story. The family did the ploughing only for fun and the father got it filmed by his own friends!
Without even verifying the facts, Telugu Desam Party president and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu jumped the gun and criticised the Jagan government for not helping the farmers!