Delhi Police questioned four suspects in Rashmika Mandanna’s deepfake video case. On Wednesday, CNN-News18 learnt that the police officials interrogated four people, who are suspected to be the uploaders of the actress’ deepfake video. Reportedly, information regarding three of these suspects was provided by META.
Following the interrogation, it is being said that the deepfake videos featuring the actress were likely uploaded using a fake identity, and the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN). News18 has also learnt that since these suspects were not ‘creators’ but ‘uploaders’ of the deepfake video, they have been let off. Police officials are likely to question more individuals in the coming days.
For the unversed, a morphed video of Rashmika Mandanna went viral on social media in November this year. In the clip, the woman with Rashmika’s face was seen getting into a lift, wearing a fitted outfit. However, it was soon clarified that the viral clip was deepfake. It grabbed everyone’s attention after superstar Amitabh Bachchan also took to the microblogging site X and demanded legal action. Later, several celebrities including Nani, Vijay Deverakonda, Naga Chaitanya and Mrunal Thakur among others also expressed concern over the viral video.
Later, an FIR was filed in connection to the incident under sections 465 (forgery) and 469 (forgery for purpose of harming reputation) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66C and 66E of the Information Technology Act at the IFSO unit of the Delhi Police’s Special Cell. Following the FIR, Delhi Police had written to META to provide the URL of the account from which the ‘deepfake’ video of actress.
Rashmika Mandanna also opened up her viral deepfake video and called it ‘scary’. “I feel really hurt to share this and have to talk about the deepfake video of me being spread online. Something like this is honestly, extremely scary not only for me, but also for each one of us who today is vulnerable to so much harm because of how technology is being misused. Today, as a woman and as an actor, I am thankful for my family, friends and well wishers who are my protection and support system. But if this happened to me when I was in school or college, I genuinely can’t imagine how could I ever tackle this. We need to address this as a community and with urgency before more of us are affected by such identity theft,” she had written on her Instagram stories.
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