A Burdwan-based vlogger was arrested on Thursday on charges of creating a video that depicted non-existent red light areas in Darjeeling town.
The video which had been created in April came to notice in Darjeeling only in August, following which there was a public outcry over the false depiction of the town.
In his video, Partha Das, 26, said a lot of people wanted to know about red streets in Darjeeling town and hence, he was showing such areas, which actually didn't exist.
"The visuals shot in some foreign countries were shown as those of Darjeeling town, accompanied by objectionable commentary," said a source.
Vikram Rai, an assistant professor at St Joseph’s (North Point) College and founder of VikRun Foundation, filed a complaint with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), which is under the Union home ministry, against the vlogger in the first week of August.
Darjeeling Lawyers’ Guild, too, filed a complaint with Darjeeling police.
Subsequently, the Facebook page, Mix Prank 2.0, was pulled down.
“We arrested Partha Das, 26, a resident of Memari, Burdwan, today (Thursday),” said Praween Prakash, the superintendent of police, Darjeeling. Das also ran a small business at Memari.
The Darjeeling police had managed to track down Das sometime back. Notices were issued to him to appear before the police in Darjeeling where he was arrested on Thursday when he arrived.
“If he had not appeared (before the police) today, we would have arrested him from Burdwan as we had already tracked him down,” said Prakash.
The Darjeeling district police chief said a preliminary investigation suggested that the accused had created false content to attract viewership. “We also found some adult content on his page. Primarily, he seems to be creating such content to attract viewership,” said Prakash.
Das was produced in the Darjeeling chief judicial magistrate's court and granted interim bail. But he couldn't furnish the bail bond and was in the custody of the police till the filing of this report.