NEW DELHI: Indian police said Saturday they had arrested the social media chief of the country’s main opposition party over accusations he doctored a widely shared video during an ongoing national election.

The Congress party’s Arun Reddy was detained late Friday in connection with the edited footage, which falsely shows India’s powerful interior minister Amit Shah vowing in a campaign speech to end affirmative action policies for millions of poor and low-caste Indians.

Shah is often referred to as the second-most powerful man in India after Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the pair have been close political allies for decades.

Reddy “was arrested yesterday on investigation about... a doctored video of the home minister,” deputy commissioner of Delhi police Hemant Tiwari told AFP.

“We produced him in the court and he is in police custody.”

Congress spokesperson Shama Mohamed confirmed Reddy’s arrest to AFP but denied he was responsible for creating or publishing the clip.

“He is not involved in any doctored video. We are supporting him,” she said.

Authorities seized Reddy’s electronic devices for forensic verification, the Indian Express newspaper reported Saturday, quoting an unnamed police officer who accused Reddy of having “cropped and edited” the video.

Shah has been campaigning on behalf of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is widely expected to win a third term when India’s six-week election concludes next month.

Analysts have long expected Modi to triumph against a fractious alliance of Congress and more than two dozen parties that have yet to name a candidate for prime minister.

His prospects have been further bolstered by several criminal investigations into his opponents and a tax investigation this year that froze Congress’s bank accounts.

Opposition figures and human rights organizations have accused Modi’s government of orchestrating the probes to weaken rivals.

Modi’s government remains widely popular a decade after coming to power, in large part due to its positioning of the nation’s majority Hindu faith at the center of its politics despite India’s officially secular constitution.

That in turn has left India’s 220 million-strong Muslim community feeling threatened by the rise of Hindu nationalist fervor.

Since voting began last month, both Modi and Shah have stepped up campaign rhetoric on India’s principal religious divide in an effort to rally voters.

In the original campaign speech at the center of the police investigation against Reddy, Shah vows to end affirmative action measures for Muslims established in the southern state of Telangana.

Modi last month used a campaign rally to refer to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children,” prompting condemnation and an official complaint to election authorities by Congress.

But the prime minister has not been sanctioned for his remarks despite election rules prohibiting campaigning on “communal feelings” such as religion, prompting frustration from the opposition camp.

“Where is the election commission when the Prime Minister is spewing hate every day?” Shama said.

VANCOUVER: Canadian police on Friday arrested three men over the killing last year in Vancouver of a Sikh separatist, whose death has been linked to the Indian government.

The murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar plunged Canada and India into a serious diplomatic crisis last fall after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested Indian government involvement in the homicide.

India dismissed the allegations as “absurd” and responded furiously, briefly curbing visas for Canadians and forcing Ottawa to withdraw diplomats.

Three Indian nationals, two aged 22 and one aged 28, were arrested Friday and charged with first degree murder and conspiracy charges. They are accused of being the shooter, driver and lookout on the day Nijjar was killed.

They were arrested by police in Edmonton, in the neighboring province of Alberta, where they reside, and are being held pending further proceedings.

All had been in Canada for between three and five years, police said at a news conference.

“This investigation does not end here. We are aware that others may have played a role in this homicide,” said Mandeep Mooker of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s homicide investigations team.

Nijjar — who immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen in 2015 — advocated for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan, carved out of India.

He was wanted by Indian authorities for alleged terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder.

On June 18, 2023, he was shot dead by masked assailants in the parking lot of the Sikh temple he led in suburban Vancouver.

Trudeau announced several months later that Canada had “credible allegations” linking Indian intelligence to the killing and expelled an Indian official, spurring the diplomatic tit-for-tat with New Delhi.

Mooker said Canadian police are still investigating the ties of the suspects, “if any, to the Indian government.”

“It is a bit of a sigh of relief that the investigation is moving forward,” Moninder Singh, a close friend of Nijjar, told AFP.

“It is ultimately India who is responsible and hiring individuals to assassinate Sikh leaders in foreign countries,” said Singh, spokesperson for the British Columbia Council of Gurdwaras.

In November, the US Justice Department charged an Indian citizen living in the Czech Republic with allegedly plotting a similar assassination attempt on American soil.

Prosecutors said in unsealed court documents that an Indian government official was also involved in the planning.

The shock allegations came after US President Joe Biden hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a rare state visit, as Washington seeks closer ties with India against China’s growing influence.

US intelligence agencies have assessed that the plot on American soil was approved by India’s top spy official at the time, Samant Goel, The Washington Post reported this week.

Canada is home to some 770,000 Sikhs, who make up about two percent of the country’s population, with a vocal minority calling for an independent state of Khalistan.