KOLKATA: Police probing into the security breach in the Lok Sabha on Thursday are on the hunt for a man who recorded and shared video footage of two protesters outside Parliament.
Two youths had jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the visitors’ gallery shouting slogans and releasing yellow smoke from canisters before they were overpowered, while two others had protested outside Parliament.
Officers probing into the incident identified the fugitive as Lalit Jha who lived in Kolkata where he rented a room to run coaching classes for children.
Delhi police also came to know Jha, said to be part of a six-member gang behind the breach, forwarded the video footage to college student, Nilaksha Aich, a resident of Halisahar in North 24 Parganas, shortly after the incident.
Jha’s brother Sonu, who also works in an electrical shop in Kolkata, said he had interacted with his brother three days ago. “I have no idea how he got involved in the incident. Our ancestral village is in Darbhanga, Bihar, but my father Devanand Jha used to work as a priest in the Burrabazar area in Kolkata where he was provided with a small house by his clients,” he said.
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Bhola Sharma, a resident of Rabindra Sarani where Jha rented a small dingy room, identified the suspect on seeing his photograph aired by news channels. “He stayed here for over four years. He used to teach children in the rented room. We have no idea from where he had hailed. He hardly used to interact with us,” said Sharma.
Aich, an English honours student of Bidhannagar Government College, admitted that he had received a video on WhatsApp showing demonstrations by a woman and man outside Parliament from Jha.
“I was in my college. After classes, I checked my WhatsApp messages and found it was sent by Jha whom I met in April this year in an event organised by an NGO. I saw him playing a very active role in organising the event and we shared our numbers,” said Aich.
The student said he messaged Jha about the content of the video before streaming it on his handset. “But he did not reply,” said Aich.
Jha’s Instagram account also shows that the same video footage was uploaded for live streaming.
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Investigations revealed the gang of six behind the security breach incident came to know each other through a social media platform and they are members of Bhagat Singh Fan Club.
