The four charged include popular YouTuber Manish Kashyap.
A case has been registered against four influencers, including Manish Kashyap, for allegedly conspiring to defame Union Minister Nitin Gadkari.
The Nagpur Cyber Police registered the FIR against them for spreading misleading information regarding the use of ethanol fuel (E20) and for tarnishing Gadkari’s image by dragging his name into the matter “without any concrete basis”.
Apart from Kashyap, who is a well-known YouTuber from Bihar, the others named in the FIR are Desi BoysNCR, Harshit Rathi and Anklesh Invate.
According to the police, these four influencers circulated controversial videos on popular social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram, claiming that large-scale fraud and bogus transactions were taking place involving ethanol usage.
Through these videos, they attempted to suggest that the law was being violated under the guise of the ethanol policy.
It is alleged that they deliberately misrepresented Gadkari’s ethanol-related policies in their videos.
Terming this a calculated smear campaign, Shishir Tripathi, the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s social media cell in Nagpur, lodged a formal complaint with the Nagpur Cyber Police.
The complaint states that, to lend an air of authenticity to the videos, the influencers resorted to using fake or misleading interviews with ordinary citizens, with the primary objective of damaging Gadkari’s political and social reputation. Additionally, they have been accused of disrupting social harmony by spreading such misleading information.