Another twist has surfaced in the Chandigarh University video leak case as the army personnel Sanjeev Kumar arrested in the matter, told the court that he had assumed the identity of Rankaj Verma to talk to the accused student of the University. He further told the court that Rankaj had nothing to do with the case and he had never met him before.
Sanjeev allegedly picked up Rankaj’s photograph from social media and used it to befriend the university student. He was arrested in Arunachal Pradesh and handed over to Punjab Police on September 24.
#ChandigarhUniversity MMS कांड में गिरफ्तार हुए चौथे आरोपी संजीव कुमार जो कि पूर्व फौजी हैं ने कोर्ट में कहा कि आरोपी रंकज वर्मा को छोड़ दो उसका इस केस से कुछ लेना देना नहीं है.
— ZEE HINDUSTAN (@ZeeHindustan_) September 27, 2022
As per reports, some personal videos of the accused student were found on Sanjeev’s phone, but videos of other girls were not found. Hindustan Times quoted an unnamed Police officer saying that Sanjeev attempted to erase the evidence from his phone, but the Police managed to recover the data. “Prima facie, the accused only shared her own videos with Sanjeev. We have sent the phone to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) to ascertain whether videos of other girls were shared with him or not,” the officer added.
On September 26, all four accused in the case were produced in the court, where the court sent them to a five-day Police remand. The police informed the court that Sanjeev was using two phones and they have recovered one phone from his possession. The police had asked for seven-day remand to cross-examine the accused.
The officer told HT that the number that appeared in the First Investigation Report (FIR) to which the accused student shared the videos were being used by Sanjeev. Following his revelation to the cops and to the court, Verma’s advocate Harjinder Singh Johal said, “He (Verma) has never met any of the accused. He has also lodged a complaint with the Police saying that his photograph was being misused by unidentified miscreants.”
However, the Police have not given a clean chit to Verma yet, and his alleged involvement in the case is being probed.
Chandigarh University video leak case
On September 18, it was reported that objectionable videos of multiple female students of Chandigarh University were being shared on social media. The videos were allegedly recorded by one of the hostellers.
Initially, the Police and Chandigarh University administration claimed the accused student only shared her videos with the accused person from Shimla. However, later the Police told the court that they found a video of at least one other student on the phone of the accused. Furthermore, it was assumed that based on the chats with the accused, the accused student was being blackmailed.
An SIT was formed by the Punjab government to investigate the case. There were several rumours floating around on the day when the matter came to light, including the death of a girl student by suicide whose video was allegedly leaked on the internet. However, the Police refuted the claims and said no student had committed suicide.
