India seems to be having an ‘Epstein’ moment. And unfortunately, some people want to see “files”.
The arrest of a self-styled godman in Maharashtra on charges of rape and the recovery of numerous obscene videos allegedly showing his explicit acts have led to the creation of an online black market. People online are looking for these videos. Some people on Telegram claim they can supply it.
Ashok Harat incident
On March 18, self-proclaimed godman numerologist Ashok Charat was arrested in Nashik for allegedly raping a 27-year-old woman. According to the complaint, Kalat promised to resolve the marital problems if the woman complied with his demands and then sexually assaulted her.
The special investigation team investigating the 67-year-old former merchant navy officer and director of a temple trust in Nashik has reportedly received over 100 complaints so far. Additionally, more than 50 videos and photos have been recovered by police, some of which He allegedly showed Harrat a lewd act..
Sanjay Raut of Shiv Sena (UBT) Illustrated the whole episode On the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Some people want to watch the video
According to Google Trendsfew people seem interested in who Kalat is or how this man went from being a member of the merchant navy to a highly influential “god-man.” Instead, what most people seemed to be looking for was his alleged explicit video.
Search trends from the last 24 hours show queries like “Ashok Kharat videos”, “Ashok Kharat viral videos”, “Ashok Kharat viral videos kaise dekhe” (how to watch Ashok Kharat viral videos), “Ashok Kharat viral videos kaha dekhe” (where can I watch viral videos?). People were also searching for photos of Kharat’s wife.
Now on sale. for less than $1000
Many of these queries lead to the obvious place: Telegram, an instant messaging service notorious for distributing pornographic material. Last year, when India Today Fact Check investigated; Sale of alleged leak from holy ghats of Mahakumbhthe investigation led to Telegram. The same platform is the culprit this time.
India Today Fact Check found several Telegram channels sharing short clips of the alleged video. One channel advertised that its entire cache of videos related to Kharat was available for sale.
When we asked for the price, the channel initially offered Rs 149 for membership to the channel, which offers daily updates and explicit videos. When we specifically asked about purchasing videos related to Kharat, the channel’s admin said they would sell a set of 58 videos for just Rs 699.
They also provided us with a QR code to a UPI account belonging to one ‘Nazir Sardar’.
What are these videos?
I did not purchase a cache of 58 videos. However, we investigated a video promoted as being of Kharat on many Telegram channels. And some of these appear to have been generated by AI.
Although we were not able to independently verify all of the video clips provided, we did notice anomalies in some of the videos. In one of these videos, a man (allegedly Halat) picks up a woman and places her on a desk, and nothing moves. Another video shows Kalato placing a vertical container on a woman’s head, stroking her hair and the container suddenly disappearing.
Hive Moderation detected one of the AI-generated videos with a score of 90.9 percent, and Google DeepMind’s SynthID detected that one of the viral images was synthetic.
According to Frontline reportHarrat himself had lodged a police report in December last year, alleging that he was being blackmailed out of Rs 500 million using disturbing photos and videos. In February, a Kalaat employee was arrested on suspicion of making morphed and obscene images and threatening them.
However, it’s worth noting that some videos out there may also be real. of Hindustan Times reported Ahilyanagar and Nashik police announced that two people have been arrested and eight others have been booked for distributing an obscene video of a woman who was allegedly abused by Kharat.
(Input provided by Jyoti Dwivedi and Aditya Bidwai)
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