Delhi; 09 May 2020 (UMM): A sound clip mentioned in the police FIR against Tabligi Jamat head Maulana Saad Kandhalvi is found to be “doctored” in the Initial investigation by the Delhi Police Crime Branch.
The clip stitched together using several audio files suggested that Maulana Kandhalvi had asked Jamaat members not to follow social distancing norms and prohibitory orders.
Police have now sent all the individual audio clips as well as the doctored clip to a forensic science laboratory.
According to The Indian Express, Saad and six other people associated with the management committee of Tablighi Jamaat, had been booked by the Delhi Police on charges of culpable homicide (IPC Section 304) for allegedly going ahead with a gathering of around 2,000 people at the mosque in Delhi’s Nizamuddin West despite warnings from authorities.
The FIR was registered on the basis of a complaint by SHO (Hazrat Nizamuddin) Mukesh Walia, who alleged that “an audio recording purportedly by Maulana Mohd Saad was found in circulation on WhatsApp on March 21, in which the speaker was heard asking his followers to defy the lockdown and social distancing, reported The Indian Express.
Highly placed sources told The Indian Express that police recovered a laptop from the Markaz member and gone through all the sound clips stored. “After scanning them, police found there are over 350 audio clips in three forms - raw clips of Markaz events; audio clips sent to their followers; and ones uploaded on their YouTube channel,”
A team led by Inspector Satish Kumar, searching for the specific audio which went viral, and was mentioned in the FIR, failed to find it from the laptop. “The investigation team noticed that the viral audio is a mix of several clips, which have been edited and doctored”, reported The Indian Express.
