Bengaluru police call sting video against Siddaramaiah a 'fabricated, deliberately constructed narrative'

The video contained serious allegations against Siddaramaiah, which are not repeated here because the police say they were not borne out by the evidence.

The police registered a case on 6 October after Siddaramaiah filed a complaint. The charges include identity theft, forgery, extortion and criminal conspiracy. A Bengaluru civil court issued an interim injunction on 13 October to stop the circulation of the videos concerned. Siddaramaiah had asked the court to restrain the airing, transmission and publication of the video.

Who blames whom

Siddaramaiah has called the story false and fabricated. He named Kripa Alva, who was seeking a Congress ticket from Puttur in Dakshina Kannada, as the person behind the sting. His son, Minister Yathindra Siddaramaiah, blamed some Congress leaders. Siddaramaiah has also said that he has taken the matter to the notice of the Congress high command.

Union Minister and JD(S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy has made the opposite charge. He alleged that the police were framing innocent party workers while sparing the people he called the masterminds. The JD(S) link to the arrests has therefore become part of the political argument in the state.

The police statement is an official position in an investigation that has not finished. It says that the allegations are fabricated. It does not say who commissioned the video, who produced it, or why. The charges that Siddaramaiah and Kumaraswamy have made against each other's camps are political allegations, and no court has found anyone responsible. The claims in the video itself have not been independently verified, and the police say they have found no support for them.

Next steps in the case include the forensic analysis of the phone that is said to have been used for the recording, further questioning of the people identified in the video, and the court's decision on the injunction. The police have said that the investigation into these aspects is continuing.

A sting video that is released with a serious allegation can do harm to a person even if it is later shown to be false, which is why the court granted an injunction against its circulation early on. The police case on forgery and conspiracy will have to show how it was made and by whom. For the parties, it is a test of how far a dispute inside the Congress and between the Congress and the JD(S) will go, in a state where the two have competed for the same voters.

People who receive such videos on social media should avoid sharing them while an inquiry is under way, since sharing material that a court has barred from circulation may itself be an offence.