A Delhi court on Tuesday ordered the police to file a first information report against Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Sambit Patra for posting a doctored video that showed Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal supporting the contentious farm laws, ANI reported.
Aam Aadmi Party MLA Atishi had moved the court stating that the police had refused to file a first information report on the matter.
Patra had posted the video in a tweet on January 30, but had subsequently deleted it.
Co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News Mohammed Zubair on Tuesday posted an archived version of the tweet.
A fact-check by Alt News also showed that in the original video, Kejriwal had spoken against the farm laws, and the clip posted by Patra was an edited one made by patching together sentences from different parts of the video.
In her petition to the court, Atishi alleged that Patra had uploaded the fabricated video with the intention of inciting people against Kejriwal. She stated that her complaint was related to a criminal offence and it was the duty of the police to register a first information report.
In the past too, Patra has been booked on charges of posting misleading information on Twitter.
In May, the social media platform had labelled one of his tweets as “manipulated media” for allegedly forging the letterhead of Congress’ Research Department.
Police in Chhattisgarh’s capital Raipur had filed a first information report against him in relation to the tweet. However, in June, the Chhattisgarh High Court stayed the police inquiry against him. In September, the Supreme Court dismissed petitions challenging the stay.
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