This particular picture surfaced on the Internet a day ago and spread like wild fire, even managing to make it to news portals. The reason... the somewhat similar looks of the man with our legendary Big B. The makeup was being praised heavily given the wrinkles etc of the man!
The rest was assured by the film's theme i.e. 'Thugs of Hindostan'.
Basically what we understand is, that, the one eye visible on that face which also has an uncanny resemblance with Mr.Bachchan's eyes, happened to fool everyone.
Amid all the chaos and confusion all day around this picture's authenticity and ofcourse Amitabh Bachchan's worrying state of health, we constantly tried to contact the makers of the film. We did not however get any concrete answers until night. It was only late night when a source from YRF told our reporter on whatsapp message that "It's fake. Don't put" that we finally got confirmation it wasn't our Big B.
Amitabh Bachchan’s health update: Heavy costumes for ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ take toll on Big B’s health!
And looking for further details of the pic, we found, it exists on Google since ages.
That is an old man named Shabuz posing in 1981 at Baluchistan, Pakistan when the legendary photographer Steve McCurry who is famous for his 'Afghan Girl' portrait, caught him in his camera lens.
Remember the adolescent girl with green eyes in a red headscarf looking intensely at the camera? Clicked by photographer Steve, she(Sharbat Gula) appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. It has been likened to Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Mona Lisa and has been called "the First World's Third World Mona Lisa".
Same Steve clicked Big B's 'look alike' too but 30 years ago. A 68 yr old Afghan refugee with a damaged eye clicked in Baluchistan, Pakistan about 38 years ago in 1981 is actually part of photojournalist Steve's best Afghanistan pictures series that is often exhibited. If he still lives, he should be over 100 years old today.
We guess the fans have to wait some more to get another set of pictures of the 'TOH' stars! But be careful next time! Meanwhile checkout the real looks of Big B and Aamir Khan that were leaked a while ago from the film sets. [Thugs of Hindostan: After Aamir Khan, now Amitabh Bachchan’s LOOK from the film gets LEAKED!].
UPDATE: Even an unverified Instagram page of photographer Steve McCurry has this picture on his timeline posted on January, 2017 and his caption read - "I made this portrait of Shabuz, age 68, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan. Many Afghans use only one name."