New Delhi, 17 January (H.S.): In a heated exchange over a video involving Delhi Assembly Leader of Opposition Atishi, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Delhi state president Saurabh Bharadwaj accused authorities of tampering with the footage. He asserted that the manipulation occurred in two distinct ways. First, by inserting the word guru into the audio to falsely suggest that Atishi had insulted Guruji. Second, by superimposing the word guru over background noise to create the illusion that she uttered it.
Bharadwaj claimed that no such word is audible in the video; rather, the overlaid text constitutes the tampering.
Addressing journalists at the AAP state office on Saturday, Bharadwaj pointed out that the Delhi government's forensic report failed to explicitly confirm or deny whether Atishi said the word guru. He argued that the report should have included a verbatim transcription of her statement, which it did not.
Noting that the Punjab government had conducted its own investigation, he urged the Delhi Assembly to request that report directly from Punjab authorities. Bharadwaj added that the video had been downloaded straight from BJP leader Kapil Mishra's X account and sent for analysis, rendering any chain of custody concerns baseless.
He dismissed BJP leaders' queries about the absence of an Atishi voice sample, countering that the Delhi government itself had not provided one—yet still claimed to have verified the footage. The complaint, he emphasized, pertained not to the Assembly's original video but to the version circulated on social media.
Atishi never uttered any such word, so how could it appear in the investigation? he questioned.Notably, Delhi Assembly Speaker Vijender Gupta held a press conference on Saturday, asserting that the decision to forensically examine Atishi's video had been taken unanimously during the winter session. He accused the Punjab government of dramatically expediting the probe, issuing the report, and registering an FIR. Gupta presented the detailed forensic report to the media, declaring that it unequivocally stated no tampering had occurred in the video or audio, confirming its authenticity in full.Gupta further announced that a CBI investigation would be pursued into the Punjab government's FSL report. He claimed the report explicitly detected the use of the word guru. However, an earlier Punjab police forensic analysis had suggested tampering in the video.
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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar
