The Punjab Police on Friday filed a first information report in connection with the uploading and sharing of an allegedly doctored video purportedly showing Aam Aadmi Party MLA Atishi insulting Guru Tegh Bahadur in the Delhi Assembly, The Hindu reported.
The video was uploaded by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapil Mishra.
However, the police did not specify who or how many persons have been named in the FIR.
The police commissionerate in Jalandhar registered the case based on a complaint filed by a person named Iqbal Singh, India Today reported.
Unidentified police officers said that a forensic examination of the video posted by Mishra showed that the word “guru” was “not uttered” by Atishi, The Hindu reported.
On Tuesday, a row erupted after the BJP accused Atishi of making insensitive remarks about the Sikh spiritual leader during a special discussion in the Delhi Assembly to mark the 350th martyrdom anniversary of Guru Tegh Bahadur, observed in November.
A video of the alleged comments was uploaded by Mishra and shared by others on social media.
Atishi had, at the time, rejected the allegations and said that she was talking about the BJP running away from a discussion on the worsening air pollution in the national capital and about their protest in the Assembly on the matter of stray dogs.
“But the BJP deliberately added a false subtitle and inserted the name of Guru Tegh Bahadurji into it,” the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly said on Thursday.
The allegations against Atishi had led to a ruckus during the Winter Session of the Assembly, with both the BJP and the AAP accusing each other of insulting Guru Tegh Bahadur. On Thursday, Speaker Vijender Gupta also ordered a forensic investigation of the video.
On Friday, a spokesperson for the Jalandhar police commissionerate said in a statement that “several social media posts containing a short video clip showing…Atishi allegedly making derogatory and blasphemous remarks against [Sikh] Gurus with highly inflammatory captions have been uploaded on social media platforms”, PTI reported.
The statement said that an investigation had been conducted scientifically and the video containing Atishi’s audio had been “downloaded from a social media platform of Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra”.
It added that video had been forwarded to a forensic science laboratory to be examined.
In the Delhi Assembly on Friday, BJP MLAs raised the filing of the FIR in Aam Aadmi Party-ruled Punjab, The Hindu reported. Gupta said that the move amounted to a “breach of privilege”, as video recordings from inside the Assembly “belong exclusively to the House”, the newspaper reported.
He added: “The House takes cognisance of the matter formally and will consider appropriate action against the police commissioner of Jalandhar”.
Meanwhile, the Punjab Congress on Friday claimed that its MLAs Sukhpal Khaira and Pargat Singh had been booked for sharing the allegedly doctored video, PTI reported.
In a social media post, Khaira said that the “false FIR” filed by Jalandhar Police against Singh and him was the “most shocking and blatant case of extreme political vendetta” by the Bhagwant Mann government.
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