THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It is a classic case of someone committing a crime just to show that the law and order in the state had broken down. A shocking one-minute YouTube video showing an old lady falling into a well as her grandson attempts to take a selfie had taken the social media by storm. Now, three days after the video first appeared, a filmmaker has claimed that the video was put up as part of the promotion of his film.
He claimed to have had a higher moral purpose, too, for resorting to what has been termed a "gross publicity stunt". "We wanted to show how fake videos could spread swiftly through the social media," the filmmaker said during a press conference held in Palakkad on Friday. Cyberdome nodal officer IG Manoj Abraham is not amused by the filmmaker's reasoning. "A crime is a crime whatever weird spin you try to give it," Mr Abraham said. "You cannot commit a theft and then say that you did it to prevent such a crime in future," he added.
He said that a section 153 of the Indian Penal Code could potentially be slapped on the filmmaker. If charged, the filmmaker could be sent to jail for at least six months. The video, which was uploaded on March 13, had by now garnered more than 10,000 views. The filmmaker but said that the video had been seen by more than 15 lakh people. "Till now no one had asked about the authenticity of the video," he said.
