The Indore police on Friday registered an FIR concerning a manipulated video that depicted BJP candidate Kailash Vijayvargiya as Ravan and his Congress rival as Lord Ram, for the upcoming Madhya Pradesh assembly elections. This action followed a non-cognizable offense registration on the same matter in the city a day earlier.
Kailash Vijayvargiya is the BJP candidate for the Indore-1 constituency in the November 17 MP assembly elections, competing against incumbent legislator and Congress leader Sanjay Shukla.
The non-cognizable offense report (NCR) was initially filed at the Aerodrome police station. Subsequently, the FIR (first information report) was registered at the crime branch’s police station, invoking relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 295-A (acts intended to outrage religious feelings), 298 (words intended to outrage religious feelings), and 500 (defamation).
The FIR was filed following a complaint by BJP’s legal cell workers, Ashish Dwivedi and Harshal Singh Raghuvanshi, who alleged that an individual had shared the manipulated video in a WhatsApp group named ‘Siyasi Daav Pech’ on Dussehra. The video featured a scene from a television serial portraying a battle between Ram and Ravan, with the faces of Vijayvargiya and Shukla superimposed on those of Ravan and Lord Ram, respectively.
The FIR is directed against the individual responsible for the mobile number from which the contentious video was shared, with ongoing efforts to identify the person.
