Jaipur, January 24 – Rajasthan Police on Wednesday arrested a youth, who allegedly made a deep fake video of Independent MLA Ritu Banawat and then made it viral on social media.
The accused was arrested from Maharashtra, while his partner is still absconding.
The police said that the accused worked at a cosmetic shop in Maharashtra. The investigation so far has revealed that he committed the crime to increase the number of followers on social media.
Bayana SHO Sunil Kumar said that the name of two people came up in the case — Ramaram Vishnoi (26), a resident of Balotra district who worked at a cosmetic shop in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra, and Dinesh Kumar Vishnoi, a resident of Barmer district.
The police reached Kolhapur and arrested Ramaram. Efforts are being made to arrest the second accused in the case.
Kumar said that with the help of the cyber cell in Bharatpur, the names and addresses of the accused were traced.
Ramaram was arrested on Tuesday from Azra village in Kolhapur. During interrogation, Ramaram said that he had found the photo of the MLA somewhere on the internet. He reportedly made the deepfake video viral on his social media to increase the number of followers.
It needs to be mentioned here that around two weeks back, the said video became viral on social media.
MLA Ritu Banawat had complained about it to Bharatpur SP Mridul Kachhawa and Assembly Speaker Vasudev Devnani. Following the instructions of the SP, a case was registered at the Bayana police station on behalf of the local MLA.
On the other hand, Speaker Devnani had also instructed Bharatpur Range IG, Rupinder Singh, to take action in the matter.
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