Use of Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay’s deep fake videos to collect money: Rajasthan youth moves Madras High Court seeking bail

A Rajasthan youth arrested by Tamil Nadu police, for reportedly using deep fake videos of Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay to collect money from gullible people, has approached the Madras High Court seeking bail in the case booked by the Cyber Crime Cell of Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department (CB-CID).

The plea has been listed for hearing before Justice N. Ramesh on Friday (October 23, 2026). Petitioner J. Shyabu Khan, 28, of Boontoli village in Alwar district of Rajasthan was arrested on September 12, 2026 and brought to Tamil Nadu on a transit warrant before being lodged at a local prison here pursuant to his remand.

The charge against him was that he created Facebook accounts titled ‘All India help Vijay Thalapati’ and ‘All India help’ in which the AI-generated deep fake videos of the Chief Minister were used promising help to people in need if they get themselves registered on payment of registration fees to a particular UPI number.

The cybercrime cell had come across the deep fake videos during regular cyber patrolling, tracked down the IP addresses to Boontoli and nabbed the petitioner with the assistance of Rajasthan police. The Principal Sessions Court in Chennai had on October 14, 2026 refused to gant bail to the petitioner.

Though the petitioner claimed his friend Sakrulla had created the impersonating videos, used his Facebook ID, mobile phone number as well as bank account to commit the crime, the sessions court refused to grant bail since the investigation was yet to be completed.

In his present bail plea before the High Court too, the petitioner claimed to be innocent and said his family had been put to great prejudice because of his incarceration for the last 40 days. He agreed to abide by any condition imposed by the court for the purpose of grant of bail.

The petitioner also claimed the police had arrested him without ascertaining the true facts and said the investigation must have got almost over by now as more than a month had lapsed since his arrest.