NEW DELHI: Delhi Police’s Intelligence Fusion & Strategic Ops (IFSO) unit has identified 46 Twitter handles — all originating in Pakistan — which were engaged in propagating a manipulated video of the cabinet committee meeting to insinuate that the central government had convened a meeting to remove Sikhs from the Indian Army.
According to DCP (special cell) KPS Malhotra, all of the Twitter accounts engaged in this mischief were created between October and December last year. “They are being blocked,” he added.
Technical analysis has revealed that these accounts were being operated from a single browser, a source said.
The IFSO unit had filed an FIR on Friday after the videos went viral on the social media platform. Cops had identified two of the accounts, which had started circulating the video first. The twitter accounts that started the propagation of this video were @simrankaur0507 and @eshalkaur1. They are being located. During investigation, it was noticed that there were more accounts, which had tweeted the same video with the same content and same hashtag.
“The IP address analysis revealed that these accounts were being used from Pakistan,” said a senior officer.
The video had come to Delhi Police’s notice during routine monitoring of social media. “It was observed that a fake/morphed video has been shared on Twitter by some handles. In reality, the said video was of the meeting of cabinet committee, which took place on December 9, 2021 after the demise of CDS General Bipin Rawat. The said video was readily available on various news portals and social media platforms,” said a senior officer.
“With intent to promote enmity and to instigate communal disharmony, the video was morphed and a new voice over was superimposed, in which the alleged persons tried to show that this meeting was against the Sikh community,” the officer added.
The FIR has been registered under IPC sections pertaining to offence of promoting enmity between groups and information technology Act. “Such act of promoting disharmony/enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony and can disturb public tranquility and is an offence u/s 153A IPC,” a senior officer said.
