Mumbai, 29 April

The Mumbai police have registered a case against the Maharashtra Youth Congress' social media handle and 16 others for allegedly sharing a deepfake video of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, officials said on Tuesday.

In the fake video, BJP leader Shah was purportedly seen announcing the curtailment of reservation rights of the SCs, STs and OBCs.

A complaint in this connection was filed by Mumbai BJP functionary Pratik Karpe at the Bandra Kurla Complex cyber police station on Monday, an official said.

According to the complainant, the deepfake video of Shah was created, published and widely propagated on the internet, and shared by the accused with a malafide intent to defame the Union minister.

As per the complaint, the video deceitfully portrays Shah announcing the curtailment of the reservation rights granted to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Classes. However, the original video, from where the deepfake video has been created, has completely different wordings and connotations, said the complainant.

In his original speech, Shah had said that if the BJP comes to power, they will finish the unconstitutional Muslim reservation and this right will be given to the SCs, STs and OBCs of Telangana, as per the complainant.

The accused persons made a deepfake video of the speech and circulated it widely on various social media platforms, Karpe claimed. The complainant also requested police to take down the deepfake video immediately and register a case against the accused persons, who shared it for allegedly causing disruption, enmity and hatred in different castes.

Based on the complaint, the case has been registered under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act at the BKC cyber police station against the social media handle of Maharashtra Youth Congress and 16 others, who had allegedly shared the deepfake video on various social media platforms, the official said. A probe is underway into the case, he said.

Deepfake videos are the ones which have been altered, in a convincing way, to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.