LS Polls: FIR Against Congress Candidate Under IT Act For ‘Tampering’ Video

Guwahati: Assam Police have registered a case against a Congress Lok Sabha candidate for allegedly tampering a video and sharing it on social media.

The case against Karimganj candidate Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury, following a complaint by BJP legislator Bijoy Malakar, has been lodged under section 67 of Information Technology Act, 2000, reported Hindustan Times.

Malakar, MLA from Karimganj’s Ratabari constituency, on Thursday lodged the FIR after a 28-second video of his purported speech went viral on social media. In that video, Malakar appears to be threatening people to vote for the BJP.

“I know where you are from, where your house is, the election result is on the 4th of June. Make sure JCB doesn’t reach your house after that,” Malakar is heard saying in the video.

However, Malakar claimed that his hour-long speech at an election rally had been edited and tampered with.

“Just to gain in the Lok Sobha election, they illegally edited my election speech (original video is about 1 hour long) and created a 28-second illegal and misleading video which is totally false and baseless. It has been shared by many people and is viral on social media and TV channels. This may mislead voters,” Malakar wrote in his complaint.

Malakar told HT that he was actually telling voters not to be afraid of bulldozers because the BJP was going to give them land documents.

“I have seen the viral video and later I watched my entire speech again. It is clear that they tampered it and shared it on social media with wrong intentions,” he said.

Karimganj SP Partha Pratim Das said police have taken cognisance of the case urgently and started investigating the matter.

“Another case was registered against Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury for allegedly talking about rigging during polls and we are investigating that too,” the SP informed.

Hafiz has not yet spoken anything on the case.