The Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh Police on Thursday arrested a man for allegedly uploading a doctored video of Chief Minister Adityanath on social media platform X.
Additional Superintendent of Police (Special Task Force) Raj Kumar Mishra said that the man, identified as 48-year-old Shyam Kishor Gupta, was arrested at his residence in Noida, The Times of India reported.
The doctored video was uploaded a day earlier on X, Mishra said. “The video was posted on Twitter under the account @shyamguptarpswa, causing confusion and outrage among the public.”
The doctored video shows Adityanath purportedly referencing the Pulwama attacks in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claim that the Congress would take away women's mangalsutras if voted to power in the Lok Sabha elections.
On February 14, 2019, an explosive-laden car driven by a suicide bomber rammed into a bus carrying Central Reserve Police Force personnel, killing 40 of them in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district. Pakistani terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed had claimed responsibility for the attack.
“Brothers and sisters, we also want to ask – what happened to the mangalsutras of the widows of those who were killed in the Pulwama attack?” Adityanath purportedly says in the video. “What happened to the [families and] widows of those young men?”
On April 21, Modi at a rally in Rajasthan had claimed that the Congress’ manifesto talks about calculating “the amount of gold that mothers and sisters have, get information about it and then distribute that property” among Muslim “infiltrators” and “those who have more children”.
The prime minister added: “This urban Naxal thinking will not spare even the mangalsutras of my mothers and sisters.” The term “urban Naxals” is used by BJP supporters to describe those who oppose the Modi government.
On Thursday, Additional Superintendent of Police Raj Kumar Mishra said that Gupta had admitted to uploading the video on social media.
He said that the accused was a local leader of small vendors in Noida. “He [Gupta] also owned a small kiosk and cart,” the police officer said.
On Sunday, the Delhi Police had registered a first information report pertaining to a doctored video of Union home minister Amit Shah in which he can be purportedly heard saying that the Bharatiya Janata Party will end reservations for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in government jobs and education.
What Shah had actually said – as seen in the original video that was recorded during an election rally in Telangana – was that the BJP would do away with reservations for Muslims in the southern state.
Muslims have had access to 4% reservations in education and government jobs under the Other Backward Classes category in Telangana since 2007.
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