'Wanted to increase followers': Culprit behind deepfake video of Rashmika Mandanna

New Delhi: A 24-year-old BTech degree holder from Andhra Pradesh was arrested for allegedly creating a deep fake video of actress Rashmika Mandanna to enhance the number of followers of a fan page he created in her name, Delhi Police said on Saturday.

Eemani Naveen, who hails from Guntur and presently working from home by providing services like Instagram channel promotion, landed in police net three months after the deep fake video went viral, which triggered a controversy with a number of celebrities condemning it.

The original video, which was the source of the deep fake, was posted by a British-Indian woman on October 9 last year and Naveen allegedly posted it on the Instagram channel three days later.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations, Special Cell) Hemant Tewari said Naveen is a “big fan” of the actress and had been running fan pages of three celebrities. Till the deep fake video, he was uploading “original/clean videos”.

The fan pages of two actresses other than Rashmika was in lakhs but that of Rashmika was only 90,000 and he allegedly wanted to enhance the numbers.

“Just to increase the followers on the fan page of the actress, he created the deep fake video of the actress  and posted it on the fan page on 13 October, 2023.  Due to this deep fake video, the fan following of this page rose from 90,000 to 1.08 lakh within two weeks,” he said.

However, Naveen panicked after the deep fake video attracted national attention with famous stars posting critical comments on social media.

“He got scared and deleted the posts from he Instagram channel and also changed the name of the Insta channel. He had also deleted digital data from his devices,” Tewari said.

His arrest came following the investigators scanning over 500 social media accounts which posted the deep fake video and interrogating several people. They zeroed in on Naveen’s Instagram channel as the originator of the deep fake video.

While pursuing BTech from an engineering college in Chennai, Naveen had also completed a certification in digital marketing from Google Garage besides getting trained in website development, Photoshop and video editing.

He started working from home by providing services of Photoshop, Instagram channel promotion, creating video for YouTube channels and search engine optimisation for a fee, police said.