Eemani Naveen’s followers on Instagram rose from 90,000 to 1,08000 within two weeks after he posted the deepfake video of actor Rashmika Mandanna on a fan page that he handles. The 23-year-old Guntur man who was arrested after two months of investigating the Rashmika Mandanna deepfake case said he wanted to increase the number of followers on that page. But after the video got the attention of the actors and who’s who of the film industry, including Amitabh Bachchan, condemned the video, Naveen got scared, deleted the video and changed the name of his Insta channel. Police said in the last two months at least 500 social media accounts have been analysed for the investigation. So far, the cops interrogated those who shared the video but could not reach the original creator.
Soon after the FIR was registered in the case on November 10, the Delhi Police wrote to Meta to get the URL and other details to identify the accused who made the video and put it on social media. Naveen, meanwhile, removed all digital data from his devices.
How Delhi Police traced the creator of deepfake to Guntur
After deep analysis of 500 social media accounts that shared the deepfake and the questioning all the suspects, Naveen’s account was traced on Instagram. A team of Inspector Hansraj Swami and Sub-Inspector Kapil Yaduvanshi under the supervision of ACP Manoj Kumar was sent to Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, and located Naveen at his house.
In interrogation, Naveen told the cops that he is actually a huge fan of Rashmika Mandanna and runs a fan page. He is also the admin of the fan pages of two other film actors.
How was the deepfake created?
Police said the deepface was created using artificial intelligence. Naveen took help from YouTube videos while creating the deepfake. Naveen was proficient in this and in 2019 he completed certification in digital marketing from Google Garage, while he was pursuing B-Tech. He also completed courses on website development, Photoshop and video editing from YouTube and others.
He returned to his village in March 2023 and started working from home by providing services of Photoshop, Instagram channel promotion, YouTube video creation, editing and search engine optimisation on a payment basis, PTI reported.
