The Punjab Police has registered at least six first information reports in connection with “morphed and edited speeches” of Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal speaking about the Constitution, reported The Indian Express on Tuesday.
While four of the cases have been registered against unidentified persons, two were filed against a Delhi-based lawyer named Vibhor Anand.
According to NDTV, Anand had allegedly shared a nine-second clip of one of Kejriwal’s speeches in which the Aam Aadmi Party leader can be heard saying: “Someone was saying that whoever wrote the Constitution must have been drunk while doing so.”
Bharatiya Janata Party MP Manoj Tiwari had also shared the same video.
In response, Aam Aadmi Party’s Rajasthan unit spokesperson Devender Yadav shared a 22-second clip from one of Kejriwal’s speeches from 2012, in which the former chief minister says: “I have read the constitutions of all [political] parties. The Congress constitution states that no Congress member will drink alcohol. We were talking about how whoever wrote the Constitution must have written it after drinking [alcohol].”
The FIRs, all registered in Ludhiana on complaints of local Aam Aadmi Party leaders, stated that the morphed videos had hurt the sentiments of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities.
The videos could potentially disrupt peace in Punjab and were uploaded to tarnish Kejriwal’s image, the FIRs also said.
The FIRs were registered under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to the utterance of provocative statements with intent to cause riots, forgery, as well as sections of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act and the Information Technology Act.
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