Gurgaon police claim Punjab officers paid Rs 10 lakh to tailor forensic report on video clip Mann called fake

Amid a raging row in Punjab over an “objectionable” video clip featuring Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann who has told the Akal Takht that the footage was fake and manipulated, police in Gurgaon have arrested two men following a complaint from a forensic expert that two senior Punjab Police officers allegedly paid him Rs 10 lakh to tailor a forensic report on the video clip.

The Gurgaon police FIR, which mentions two Punjab government officials, names two individuals who have been arrested – Ankit and Arun – and will be produced in court.

The Indian Express has reached out to Chief Minister Mann’s office for comment which is awaited.

The Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs, has declared the video clip “authentic” and described Mann as “Guru dokhi” (anti-Guru) and “panth virodhi” (anti-panth). Mann, however, has maintained that the person in the video was not him but an actor used to defame him.

Sources said Gurgaon police registered a case on the complaint of forensic expert Jaspreet Singh who was allegedly told to forge the report. One of the Punjab police officers is a DIG-rank officer and the other is in the rank of an SP.

“In a video-recorded statement to Gurgaon police, Jaspreet Singh claimed that he fabricated a forensic report under duress and did not know that it would be misused to counter the Akal Takht Sahib. He himself, being a Sikh, gave a written complaint to police that corroborated the sequence of events,” sources said.

In his statement to Gurgaon police, Jaspreet claimed that he engaged two cyber experts, Ankit in Delhi and Arun in Panchkula, and that under continuous WhatsApp supervision from the Punjab Police SP, the draft reports were repeatedly edited until they conformed to the expectations of the two police officers.

Story continues below this ad

Detailing the sequence of events, sources said that on the night of June 15, the DIG-rank officer checked into a room at a hotel in Gurugram at 9.40 pm. Around an hour later, the SP-rank officer reached the same hotel and checked into another room.

Jaspreet then came to the hotel carrying a bag. He went directly to the SP-rank officer’s room and spent about 40 minutes there. Following this, both men proceeded to the DIG-rank officer’s room for a 15-minute discussion. Jaspreet left the hotel to spend the night at a guest house in Sector 46, Gurgaon, sources said.

On June 16, Jaspreet returned to the hotel around 8.30 am. By 9.45 am, the DIG, the SP and Jaspreet were having breakfast together in the hotel’s restaurant. During breakfast, the DIG-rank officer, sources said, directed Jaspreet to procure two separate cyber lab reports from different individuals/labs claiming the video was AI-generated.

When Jaspreet cautioned the officers that any resulting report would be a “concocted” version’, the DIG assured him he would be paid handsomely and put the SP in charge of the logistics to get the report that very day, the sources said.

Story continues below this ad

Gurgaon police, sources said, found that Jaspreet, while leaving the hotel, was handed Rs 10 lakh cash by security personnel of the DIG-rank officer.

Police investigation, sources said, showed that of Rs 10 lakh he received, Jaspreet paid Rs 7.5 lakh towards an installment and deposited the remaining Rs 2.5 lakh into his personal bank account. He subsequently paid Rs 50,000 to Ankit via an online transaction, while Arun was yet to receive his share.