GURGAON: A day after Punjab government officials arrested two people and launched an investigation for allegedly obtaining a fake forensic report in connection with a controversial video allegedly featuring CM Bhagwant Mann, Gurgaon police officials said they have recovered CCTV footage corroborating the complainant’s claims about a gathering at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in the city at his request. According to sources, the meeting took place in a hotel room.An official said, “The time of the meeting listed in the complaint also matches. We are using facial recognition technology to confirm who was present.”The complainant, Jaspreet, who claims to be a digital forensics expert, said he received a call from someone claiming to be a “high-ranking government official from Punjab” and asked to meet him at Crowne Plaza. There, Jaspreet claimed that two Punjab government officials met him and asked him to arrange two independent forensic reports stating that the videos linked to the Punjab CM were AI-generated, digitally altered or fake.The two people who made these reports were arrested on Tuesday. The district court granted police an eight-day seizure for further investigation.Police said they had seized digital evidence from the suspect and sent it for forensic analysis. The lab reports in question from Cyber Yaan and Cipher Sentinel (a lab that police claim did not conduct any physical ground operations) claimed that the photos of the commercial provided by public sources did not match the height, build, posture, or skin color of the people in the video, and did not trigger a facial recognition match.While Mann, who claims the video is fake, has accused Haryana Police of using coercion to build a case, Gurgaon Police Commissioner Shivash Kaviraj said the investigation relied on “irrefutable scientific and objective digital evidence”, including verified CCTV footage.“Gurgaon Police has stressed that the investigation is completely protocol-based, free from human bias and aimed at establishing clear evidence to prevent tampering with the chain of events,” he said.
