Police adds criminal conspiracy charges to FIR in HM Shah deepfake case

Criminal conspiracy charges have been added to the FIR registered in connection with the doctored video of Union Home Minister Amit Shah's speech, the Delhi Police said on Saturday, a day after it arrested a national coordinator of the Congress' social media team.

Arun Beereddy, a native of Telangana's Hyderabad, who handled the "Spirit of Congress" account on X, was arrested from Delhi on Friday, police said. This is the first arrest made by the Delhi Police in the case.

"We have added section 120B (punishment of criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in the FIR as investigation has indicated to a larger conspiracy," a police officer said.

Beereddy is among the prominent members of the Congress' social media team and he is accused of being among those who uploaded the doctored video on social media and also shared it with other members of the party, according to officials.

Following his arrest, he was produced before a court here on Friday night and it sent him to three days in custody for further interrogation by the police's Special Cell.

The interrogation of Beereddy has started, the officials said.

Initially, the cell on a complaint from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), which comes under the home ministry, had registered the FIR on Sunday under IPC sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth), 465 (punishment for forgery), 469 (forgery for purpose of harming reputation), 171G (false statement in connection with an election).

The FIR also has Information Technology (IT) Act's section 66C which deals with fraudulent or dishonest use of electronic signature, password or any other unique identification feature of a person.