Well-known RTI activist Saket Gokhle has written to the Election Commission of India (ECI) and Assam chief secretary to take action against some national media journalists besides the promoter of local cannel for airing a doctored video of AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal.
RTI activist Gokhle in the letter written to ECI as well as Assam chief secretary has sought action against India TV anchor Archana Singh, DD News consulting editor Ashok Shrivastav, ABP News anchor Astha Kaushik, News Nation consulting editor Deepak Chaurasia and News Live promoter Riniki Bhuyan Sharma.
Riniki Bhuyan Sharma, CMD of New Live, which aired the video multiple times, is the wife of BJP’s Northeast election strategist and Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
“You are hereby requested to initiate an immediate and urgent inquiry in this incident and take appropriate action within next seven days,” the letter read.
A doctored video clip that gives the impression that AIUDF chief Ajmal had said in Bengali that the Congress-AIUDF alliance will turn India into an Islamic state has set the temperature soaring in poll-bound Assam.
The video, which went viral on social media since Tuesday night, was later found to be “doctored”.
The AIUDF chief dismissed the video clip released by an NGO — the Legal Rights Observatory — as “100 per cent fake and adulterated” and circulated to “create” communal divisions.
He also released the original video clip of his speech delivered in Barpeta in 2019.
In the original speech, Ajmal says the Mughals did not dare to turn India into an Islamic state and asks Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to dream about a Hindu Rashtra.
Perfume baron Ajmal said he had started discussions with his lawyers about filing an FIR and moving the ECI against those behind the circulation of the “fake” video.