The case was registered at Civil Lines police station in Raipur following a complaint lodged on August 17 by Chhattisgarh BJP spokesperson Ujjwal Deepak. Police booked the accused under Sections 336, 353 and 196 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The investigation has since been transferred to Dhamtari police because the event shown in the disputed footage took place in Kurud in Dhamtari district.
The controversy centres on a video showing BJP MLA Ajay Chandrakar unfurling his party’s flag. The clip circulated widely around Independence Day on August 15 with claims that BJP representatives had raised the party flag instead of the national Tricolour during official celebrations.
Checks of the footage and earlier social media posts established that the video was recorded nearly five months earlier, on March 22, during a BJP organisational training programme in Kurud. Visuals from the event show that the BJP flag was raised as part of the inauguration of a Mandal-level training camp rather than an Independence Day ceremony.
Shrinate shared the clip on August 15 while criticising the BJP over what was presented as disrespect towards the national flag. Rathore and the “Gen Z of India” account were also accused of amplifying the same or similar claims. Shrinate subsequently removed the video post from her social media account.
The police complaint alleges that presenting footage from the March training camp as an Independence Day event was intended to mislead viewers, damage the reputation of BJP representatives and generate political or social tension. The FIR represents allegations at this stage, and the registration of a criminal case does not establish guilt.
Chandrakar, a BJP legislator representing Kurud and a former Chhattisgarh minister, rejected the claim attached to the viral video. He said the footage had no connection with Independence Day and maintained that he hoisted the Tricolour in accordance with official protocol at the government Independence Day programme at Eklavya Sports Ground in Dhamtari.
Material posted online months before the dispute has provided investigators and fact-checkers with a chronology of the video. A BJP worker had uploaded footage from the Kurud programme in March, while Chandrakar’s own social media material from the event described the inauguration of the training camp through the raising of the party flag and ceremonial lighting of lamps.
Several independent verification exercises reached the same finding after tracing the visuals to the March 22 event. The matching location, participants and frames helped establish that the clip preceded the Independence Day celebrations by almost five months.
Police are examining how the video resurfaced, the accounts that first circulated it with the Independence Day claim, and the sequence through which it was amplified across social networks. Investigators are also expected to examine captions, comments, metadata and other digital evidence to determine the role of individual accounts.
The episode comes amid heightened political scrutiny of misinformation distributed through social media, where authentic videos can acquire a substantially different meaning when detached from their original date or setting. The case also underlines the growing importance of digital provenance in political disputes, particularly when old material is recirculated around national events.
The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which replaced the colonial-era penal code in July 2024, contains provisions covering offences including forgery, dissemination of false information capable of promoting enmity, and acts alleged to threaten harmony between different groups. The precise application of the provisions invoked in the Raipur case will depend on the evidence gathered during the investigation and subsequent judicial scrutiny.
