Clubhouse case: Cops question six youths

No arrest has been made so far in Delhi. The Mumbai Police Crime Branch had earlier arrested three persons from Haryana in connection with the case, after a video recording of the group was uploaded on social media. Delhi Police said they identified the alleged speakers and participants of the group and asked the six to join the investigation.

Sources said all six joined Clubhouse, an audio-only app, in June-July 2021. They allegedly joined the said discussion in December. They have usernames that can be seen in the recording.

“We have found two such groups where they passed vulgar comments against women, especially Muslims. These are all 17-21 year old students who started doing this last December. We are not making any arrests as we need more evidence other than the username and voice recording. We will record their voices and send them for analysis before producing them in court,” said a police source.

DCP (Cyber Cell) KPS Malhotra said out of the six, two are women and one is a juvenile who was the alleged “moderator” of the discussion. One of them, an 18-year-old student from Lucknow, was questioned Friday.

“He revealed he created an audio chat room on Clubhouse and handed over moderator rights to a user named ‘Sallos’, who then started making vulgar comments on the group and left. We have seized their phones. Sallos is 17 years old. He admitted before his parents that he was the moderator of the said group. Later, he changed his ID,” said the DCP.

A student from Jodhpur was also called for questioning as police found he was using multiple accounts on Clubhouse. Another student, pursuing B.Com from Dehradun, was also called. His clubhouse ID was made last June and deactivated on Wednesday. “He stated that he participated in the room for about 10 minutes but did not pass any comments. He was just a listener. We have seized his devices,” added the DCP.

The two women are from Kerala and Delhi and have joined the probe. The women said they spoke on the group but didn’t “pass derogatory remarks”.

Talking about the case, DCP Malhotra said, “Controversy has erupted over the video recording of the audio chat discussion. Before any arrest, the authenticity of the video recording and voice matching has to be verified. The only evidence/ source in the present case is the person who had video recorded the audio conversation. The app does not record the audio conversations.”

The Indian Express visited the homes of the two Faridabad youths arrested by Mumbai Police. A family member of Yashkumar Parashar said: “We do not know anything about the case or any app. We don’t know who came to our house and took him away.” The house of another accused, Jaishnav Kakkad, was found locked.