A local court in Arunachal Pradesh capital Itanagar on Friday granted a day’s police custody of a Punjab-based YouTuber, who was arrested for a racial slur against an MLA from the State.
YouTuber Paras Singh, who called the State’s Congress MLA Ninong Ering and the people of the State “Chinese” in a video, was brought to Itanagar by a State police team late on Thursday.
“He was produced before a court through video conferencing and we took him into custody for interrogation and investigation. He will be produced in the court again tomorrow (Saturday) after the expiry of the police remand,” the State’s Director-General of Police R.P. Upadhyaya told The Hindu .
“We are questioning him on three points — whether he makes such comments habitually, whether he did it deliberately to generate more hits since his YouTube channel is monetised, and whether he is really ignorant about Arunachal Pradesh and its people,” he said.
Investigating officials said the YouTuber claimed he did not know about the State and that his channel has been generating up to ₹25,000 a month focussing primarily on the video game PUBG.
The YouTuber had attacked Mr. Ering, also a former Lok Sabha member, after he had appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ban Battlegrounds Mobile India, a variant of PUBG.
Two more YouTubers are also on the radar of the Arunachal Pradesh police for racial comments against Mr Ering. Their YouTube channels are GTX Preet and 420 Gaming.
“We have their locations. We will take action when the time comes,” Mr Upadhyaya said.
The State’s police registered a case against Paras Singh under three relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.
