Sataparna Mukherjee, 17, beams with self-satisfaction. “I don’t want this to be an end. I want to go more high (sic). A NASA scientist and a celebrated writer,” says the ISC student from Kamduni village (about 30 km from Kolkata) in an interview given to Kolkata’s leading news channel on January 29. The YouTube link to the interview has a volley of comments. “I want to go ‘more high’?? I will be the most ‘happiest’ person? Oxford?? Please give me a break!” says one. “Is this a news channel or faking news channels?” asks another.

Earlier this month, her face was probably all over your Facebook timeline. The teenage student of a school in a north Kolkata suburb claimed to have been offered an internship by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) and a full scholarship from the University of London. “I was feted by All India Students’ Association in August when I got a confirmation from NASA. After which I was interviewed by the local daily Ganashakti ,” she said. Eventually, Michael Cabbage, Associate Chief for Communications, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, clarified that they neither have any record of a student by that name nor do they have a facility in London. “We have no record of any student named Sataparna Mukherjee being granted an internship, scholarship or any form of academic or financial assistance from our institute. Furthermore, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies has no facilities in London and all of our internships are awarded to students who live within 50 miles of our location in New York City. The application deadline for our 2016 students closed March 1. We have not made any selections yet,” Cabbage told Huffington Post India over an email.

However, this fact-checking was done by the website after almost all the leading dailies and media houses of the country had celebrated Sataparna’s “achievement” through glowing articles that talked about the 17-year-old’s passion for writing, and the long list of her extra-curricular activities. “It’s like every Bengali’s dream come true. NASA, Oxford, topping all exams, I am surprised how people lapped all this up without even questioning how NASA, an agency of the US federal government, can get together with Oxford to offer a 17-year-old a special internship,” says Piyasree Dasgupta of Huffington Post , who wrote to the chief of communications to corroborate the facts.

Indeed, the myth of Sataparna Mukherjee is, more than anything else, a creation of the Indian media. “When you are under constant pressure to provide breaking news, you have to overlook fact-checking at times. Moreover, Sataparna’s father, Pradip Mukherjee, is a renowned social activist,” says a representative from the Bengali news channel ABP Ananda, one of the first channels to “break” the Sataparna Mukherjee story, on the condition of anonymity.

Sataparna’s story was also given a political twist by a number of news channels in Bengal because of her father’s credentials. The headmaster of Kamduni Primary school, Pradip Mukherjee was one of the most prominent voices against the brutal gangrape and murder of a 21-year-old in Kamduni village in 2013. He had attracted a lot of flak from the West Bengal government for joining a protest rally at the village. “I would travel from one department of the state government to another to get her some grants to go to London, but no one helped,” he says. When his daughter’s claims were disproved, some local channels tried to project it as a conspiracy against the Trinamool government. “How the media has nailed this case is potentially dangerous. If indeed Sataparna is an attention-seeking teenager, isn’t it our fault that we have given her that much attention without checking facts? Instead of taking that responsibility, we are trying to spin a new tale,” says Dasgupta.

Ayoti Patra, a PhD research scholar at the University of Maryland, USA, was one of the first people to call Sataparna’s bluff through a Facebook post. She feels that any “diligent journalist should have noticed the inconsistencies in Sataparna’s theories”.

This is not the first time that the Indian media has fallen prey to poor reporting. In 1996, Ramar Pillai from Tamil Nadu claimed to have found a magic bush that could transmute water to petrol. This was reported by one Tamil Nadu newspaper and was later followed up by almost all the leading national dailies. Eventually, it turned out that he was using sleight of hand to substitute kerosene for the liquid he claimed to have derived from the bush.

Sataparna, who eventually made a plea to be spared through a Facebook post, said she “might be suffering from delusion and the incessant phone calls from media houses are hampering her preparation for board exams”.

Abha Soni, a consultant psychiatrist from Nagpur who works extensively with teenagers, reckons that it’s high time we let her be. “If a person is delusional, he or she will go to any extent to prove his or her theory. They won’t accept anything to the contrary. In fact they will fabricate other lies to make it sound plausible. The least we can do is to let her be instead of bothering her for one more quote,” says Soni. Amen to that.

Debapriya Nandi is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata

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