Police have arrested two men for allegedly recording and circulating purportedly fake information in a video in which an elderly man was seen appealing to chief minister Mamata Banerjee to shoot him if her government failed to feed him during the lockdown.

Police said the man in the video was a jatra actor.

The video became viral after the BJP’s Twitter handle in Bengal posted it with a caption that suggested the man had not eaten for two days.

The Telegraph reported on April 19 that Basirhat police had arrested the man in the video — Mobarek Mondal — and published another video that showed the same man saying that some youths in the locality had asked him to play the role of a starving man.

The police also seized ration cards of at least five members of Mondal’s family and claimed the documents suggested that they were receiving ration from the government.

Early on Monday, officers of Matia police station arrested Inamul Haque Sahaji, 32, and Kutubuddin Mondal, 25 — both residents of Begumpur, where the alleged incident had happened.

“Kutubuddin had recorded the video and posted it on his Facebook wall. Inamul, who had got the video from someone else, had also posted it on his Facebook timeline. We are also looking for someone who posted the video in the YouTube,” said a senior officer of Basirhat police district.

However, police are yet to zero in on the youths who according to Mondal had told him to act like a starving man.

The accused have been booked under charges of violating the lockdown that could lead to a maximum punishment of two years in jail.