PoliticsKarnataka
Man held in Delhi for uploading Siddaramaiah 'sting' video gets bail in Bengaluru
Bengaluru's Central Crime Branch says Ritesh Pandey used a second-hand phone with no SIM card to put the clip online. Siddaramaiah calls the video a fake meant to blackmail him.
Key points
- The CCB arrested Ritesh Pandey of Ghaziabad in Delhi, suspecting him of uploading the clip.
- He was produced in a local court on Friday and granted bail.
- Siddaramaiah says the video was made 'with the intention to blackmail me'.
A man arrested in Delhi on suspicion of uploading the contested “sting” video of former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has been granted bail, Bengaluru police have said.
The city’s Central Crime Branch (CCB) picked up Ritesh Pandey, a resident of Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, in Delhi. He was produced before a local court on Friday afternoon and released on bail. Police have not said what he is charged with.
Investigators suspect Pandey was the main person who put the clip on social media. According to the police, he received the video on a pen drive, bought a second-hand smartphone in Delhi, and used it without a SIM card, over Wi-Fi, to circulate the footage. The phone has been seized and sent for forensic examination. Police also found that his X account followed only four profiles, among them Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister H D Kumaraswamy. Pandey was reported to have worked at Kumaraswamy’s camp office; there has been no comment from the minister.
Siddaramaiah has filed a police complaint over what he calls a “fake sting operation” and has obtained a civil court injunction to stop the video from spreading. “This is a false case. This case was done with the intention to blackmail me,” he told reporters in Mysuru on Friday. “I was Chief Minister for 8 years; at that time no incident of blackmailing me happened.”
The clips set off a fresh round of attacks between the Congress and the BJP in Karnataka when they surfaced this month.