The Hyderabad Cyber Crimes police arrested five individuals, from the social media team of Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee, for circulating an allegedly morphed video of the speech delivered by Union Home Minister Amit Shah during his election campaign and public meeting at Siddipet.
According to police, Pendyala Vamshi Krishna, Manne Sathish, Pettam Naveen and Asma Tasleem and Koya Geetha have been arrested and five mobile phones, one tablet, two laptops and two CPU cabinets seized from them.
The arrests were made following a complaint from BJP State general secretary G. Premender Reddy on April 27. He claimed that the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee posted morphed/fabricated video of Union Home Minister Amit Shah on their X (formerly Twitter) account. “The said act of the TPCC president and their social media in morphing/fabricating Amit Shah’s speech and committed offence under the I.T. Act. The deliberate and mischievous act is aimed at misleading the people and voters creating fear amongst the OBC communities,” Mr. Reddy said in his complaint.
In this regard the Cyber Crime Police of Hyderabad registered a case under sections 469, 505(1)C ,171 G, 502(2) of the IPC and Section 125 of the Representation of the People (RP) Act.
The arrested individuals’ role is to monitor social media posts related to political parties and upload them on their official and personal X handles.
“On April 23, during a public meeting in Medak, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah made a speech. Pendyala Vamshi Krishna received a morphed video of the speech on WhatsApp and uploaded the same video on the ‘@INCTelangana’ handle and shared it in various WhatsApp groups. The rest of the arrested group saw the video and further shared it to their individual twitter handles. When notified by X about sensitive content, they deleted it. Thus they violated the Model Code of Conduct,” explained the officials.
They were produced before the Nampally court on Friday and orders were passed with a conditional bail of each of them providing ₹10,000 with two sureties. It was also mentioned that they have to give attendance before the Investigating Officer of the case from May 6 to May 10 till further orders.
