JNU stir: Sedition theory under cloud as Hyderabad lab finds 2 clips doctored

NEW DELHI: Two of the seven video clips, which allegedly captured events that unfolded at Jawaharlal Nehru University between February 9 and 12 and were submitted by Delhi government for forensic analysis, have been found to be doctored.

The report submitted by Hyderabad-based Truth Labs to the district magistrate has indicated that two clippings "are not representations of true events".
The findings have cast a shadow over the allegations of anti-national activities against Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar and other students. Over the last fortnight, these videos have been cited as the 'primary evidence' against the students to build a case of sedition. Now, the 'evidence' itself appears to be questionable and opens the door for an ugly political battle.

The report is expected to be submitted to the government on Thursday after which it will decide on the course of action.

Truth Labs has submitted two reports, analysing five clips in one and two in another. The report says that one of the two-set clips, Q1— which shows a day-gathering in which Kumar is shouting slogans with Umar Khalid standing next to him—appears to be doctored. Q2, a footage downloaded from a twitter account, shows no signs of editing. However, "discrepancies in the lip-sync seen in the recordings Q1 and Q2 indicate that the audio stream is not a part of the originally recorded video and, hence, the conversations heard are not authentic and do not represent true speech by the speakers...as the audio and video streams are from different sources, merged with an intention to make these recordings appear as representations of true events".

Chairman of Truth Labs, KPC Gandhi, clarified that while Q1 has clearly been edited with introduction of words from other sources, in Q2 only attempts to interrupt the video stream were made and there was no manipulation in the footage.

The report mentions that Q2 was "associated with user account "Shilpi Tewari" on Twitter, which resulted in a controversy surrounding a former aide of Union HRD minister Smriti Irani. Gandhi said: "The clips were downloaded by the client and sent to us. Our brief was to determine the authenticity of the footage and not find out the source. The reference is only to the clip that was sent to Truth Labs, downloaded from a particular Twitter account, but we cannot say whether it originated from this account," said Gandhi.

The second report states that the other clip, Q5, showing footage of the protest on the night of February 9, has been found to be edited at several points, indicating that "several utterances have either been deleted or inserted from the recording Q5. Temporal and spatial edits were found in the video of the recording Q5...it is not continuous, authentic and does not represent a true and complete event".

On February 13, the Arvind Kejriwal government had ordered a magisterial inquiry into the alleged raising of anti-national slogans on the JNU campus. on February 9.