UBT IT cell head among 3 more held over morphed clip of Shiv Sena netas

MUMBAI: The police on Monday arrested three more persons for allegedly circulating and forwarding a morphed video of Shiv Sena MLA Prakash Surve and former Dahisar corporator Sheetal Mhatre, taking the total number of arrests in the case to five.
Among the arrested on Monday were the Uddhav Thackeray faction's IT cell head Sainath Durge and the faction's social media coordinator Vinayak Dawre (27).
Joint commissioner of police (law and order) Satyanarayan Chaudhary confirmed Durge's arrest on Monday evening. Dawre was arrested from his Kalyan home on Monday, Dahisar police said. The third person held on Monday was Ravindra Choudhary (43), a Dahisar resident.
The police said the webpage 'Matoshree' was created by Dawre in 2012, and it was used to upload the video on Sunday.
The first two arrests, of Manas Kuwar (26) and Ashok Mishra (45), had been made on Sunday. While Durge will be produced before court on Tuesday, the other four accused were produced before Borivli court on Monday and remanded in police custody till March 15. "The webpage in the name of Matoshree, which was not approved or sanctioned by Thackeray, was created in 2012 and has been active since 2019. None of the four accused are known to each other. We have written to Facebook to get details of the accused who posted the morphed video," said an officer at Dahisar police station.
The arrests were made based on a complaint filed by Surve's son Raj (27) on Sunday. Raj's complaint stated the post was shared by a 'Facebook friend' of the Matoshree page, Manas Kuwar, showing his father and Mhatre in poor light. .