Bengaluru police have made the first arrest in the investigation into a video that purportedly showed a sting operation targeting former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, with a young man from Delhi taken into custody and brought to the Karnataka capital for questioning.
The Central Crime Branch of the Bengaluru police arrested Delhi-based Ritesh Pandey on Saturday, 24 October 2026, in connection with the uploading of the video. Officers said Pandey, who is in his early twenties and hails from Uttar Pradesh, is a resident of Ghaziabad. He was apprehended in Delhi and then brought to Bengaluru, where investigators are questioning him about his alleged role in circulating the footage online.
Police said the phone allegedly used to upload the video has been seized and sent for forensic examination. Investigators are examining the device, the details of the SIM card associated with it, and the wider digital trail left by the upload, in an effort to establish how the material reached the internet and who else may have been involved in its preparation and circulation.
According to the police account, Pandey told investigators that he had been instructed to upload the footage by a person associated with the social media team of a regional political party. Officers said he received the video on a pendrive and then used a second-hand smartphone and a second-hand SIM, along with an e-SIM-enabled device connected through Wi-Fi, to download the material from the pendrive and upload it.
Police said no SIM card was inserted in the device at the time, a step they believe was intended to avoid detection.
The Central Crime Branch is now working to identify the person who handed over the pendrive and to trace the chain of people involved before the upload. Several people have been summoned in connection with the case, investigators said, and Pandey is reported to have revealed a name during questioning, following which summons have been issued. Police have not publicly named all those summoned, and the investigation into the wider network behind the video remains under way.
Pandey was produced before a Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Bengaluru after his arrest. The court granted him bail, subject to his cooperating with the investigation. Police said the offence in the case is punishable with imprisonment of under seven years. The grant of bail does not bring the investigation to an end, and officers said Pandey will remain under obligation to assist them as they pursue further leads.
The arrest is the first in a case that has drawn considerable political attention in Karnataka over the past month. Last month, two videos carrying serious allegations against Siddaramaiah were uploaded on YouTube. The videos prompted a strong response from the former chief minister, who moved court and obtained an injunction barring the press from reporting on the videos.
He also lodged a police complaint seeking an investigation into the origin and circulation of the material.
Siddaramaiah has consistently rejected the contents of the alleged sting operation. On Friday, he described the alleged sting as totally concocted and said it was intended to blackmail him. He demanded a fair investigation that would identify those behind the purported operation, rather than allowing the allegations contained in the video to stand unexamined. His remarks have framed the police inquiry as a test of whether the full chain behind the footage can be established.
His son, Minister Yathindra, has also spoken publicly on the matter. According to a report in the Deccan Herald, Yathindra alleged that people from within the Congress itself were behind the purported operation, with the aim of tarnishing his father's image. The allegation, as reported, adds a further political dimension to a case that already cuts across party lines, although investigators have not publicly confirmed any such link.
Police have said their focus remains on the digital evidence and on tracing the source of the video.
Karnataka Home Minister Priyank Kharge has assured a transparent investigation into the case, according to a summary carried by Rediff. The assurance is significant because the case involves a former chief minister, a widely circulated online video, and competing political claims about who benefited from its release.
A transparent process, officials and observers note, will need to show not only who uploaded the video but also who created it, who supplied it, and what motive lay behind its circulation.
Earlier in the investigation, the Central Crime Branch questioned Rakesh Shetty, the head of a private Kannada news channel. According to one report, Shetty had obtained anticipatory bail on Friday. His questioning forms part of the broader effort to understand how the videos moved from their source to public platforms, although police have not detailed what, if anything, emerged from that questioning.
The arrest of Pandey now gives investigators a person they say was directly involved in the act of uploading, a step that may help them move further back along the chain.
The case raises wider questions about the use of online video, social media teams, and anonymous uploads in political controversy. A video uploaded from a device using a second-hand SIM and a Wi-Fi connection, as police have described in this case, can travel quickly and widely before its authenticity can be tested.
Courts can grant injunctions against reporting, and police can investigate the upload, but the original allegations often continue to circulate in public discussion long after the first upload. Investigators in such cases typically rely on forensic examination of devices, records from telecom and internet service providers, and the digital footprints left on platforms to reconstruct events.
Forensic examination will therefore be central to the next stage of this investigation. The seized phone, the SIM details, and the digital trail are expected to help police establish the timing of the download and upload, the networks used, and any contact between Pandey and those who allegedly instructed him. If the forensic findings corroborate the account given to police, investigators may be able to identify further individuals for questioning.
If they do not, police will need to reassess the sequence of events they have described so far.
The political significance of the case extends beyond the technical investigation. Siddaramaiah is a senior political figure in Karnataka, and any video purporting to show a sting operation against him is bound to attract attention. At the same time, the fact that the allegations in the video remain alleged, and not proven, places a responsibility on reporting and public discussion to distinguish between what a video claims and what investigators have established.
Until the investigation concludes, the contents of the video should be treated as allegations under inquiry, not as established fact.
One report has added a further claim that requires careful attribution. The News Mill has reported that Pandey was employed at the camp office of Union Minister H D Kumaraswamy, and that his account on the social media platform X followed only four profiles, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Kumaraswamy. This is presented here only as that outlet's report.
It has not been presented by police as an established fact in the accounts of the arrest, and it should not be treated as such unless confirmed through official records or further verified reporting. Investigators have not publicly linked the arrest to any particular political office.
The distinction between reported claims and established facts matters in this case because several different narratives are already in circulation. One narrative focuses on the alleged sting itself and the serious allegations it contains. Another focuses on the police account of an instructed upload using a pendrive, a second-hand device, and Wi-Fi to avoid detection.
A third, carried in political statements, points to internal or rival political motives. The police investigation, if it proceeds transparently and follows the digital evidence, is the process through which these narratives can be tested against verifiable material.
In the coming days, attention will turn to whether Pandey continues to cooperate with investigators as required by his bail conditions, whether the summons already issued lead to further questioning, and whether forensic results provide a clearer picture of the upload. Investigators will also face questions about how quickly they can identify the person who allegedly handed over the pendrive, since that person may hold the key to understanding where the video originated.
For now, the case stands at its first arrest, with a young man from Ghaziabad at the centre of the police account, a seized phone undergoing forensic examination, and a series of unanswered questions about who commissioned, created, and circulated a video that has already caused a political storm in Karnataka.
The outcome of the investigation will depend less on the claims made in the video itself and more on whether police can produce a verifiable account of how it reached the public.
(Reporting based on The Hindu, Deccan Herald and The New Indian Express.)