The digital trail and IP address of the deepfake video of cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar has led the Mumbai police investigation to the Philippines, where the suspect allegedly posted the clip on social media last month.
The police have also discovered that a Hotmail account was used to upload the video and have written to the email service provider asking for information about the person.
“Based on technical investigation of the video, we found that it was uploaded from an IP address in the Philippines. We are however checking if a VPN was used in order to mask the actual location from where the video was uploaded," an officer told Indian Express.
Tendulkar recently warned his followers on social media not to be fooled by a deepfake video in which his face and voice were manipulated to falsely claim that his daughter had won money by playing the gaming app.
The Mumbai police had filed a complaint following Tendulkar's post on X (formerly Twitter), urging the authorities concerned to take appropriate action.
Several Bollywood celebrities, including Rashmika Mandanna, Kajol, Katrina Kaif, Alia Bhatt and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, have been victims of deepfake scams, which spread fake news and misinformation around the world.
The Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, had said that the Indian government was working on bringing in new regulations soon to tackle deepfakes and had also directed social media companies to identify and block fraudulent videos.