Manish Kashyap – engineer who turned YouTuber, nursed political ambitions

Bihar’s economic offences unit (EOU) and the Tamil Nadu police had booked him under various sections of the Indian Penal Code for trying to create enmity between two groups and communities. One of the three recent cases against Kashyap is related to him trying to pass off a 2019 picture of arrest in another case as his arrest in latest case of fake migrants videos.

Kashyap was arrested twice in 2019, once for allegedly damaging the statue of King Edward VII in Bettiah and later for roughing up a Kashmiri shopkeeper in Patna’s Lhasa Market after the Pulwama attack.

Of the seven cases against him in West Champaran, Kashyap has got bail in six. West Champaran police had in 2021 confiscated his paternal home in Majhaulia’s Dumri Mahanwa village after he allegedly threatened the then manager of State Bank of India’s Paras Pakri branch.

Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) N H Khan, who heads the EOU, is leading the investigation in the role of Kashyap and three others from Bihar in the fake videos cases.

Bihar ADG (Headquarters) Jitendra Singh Gangwar said, “West Champaran police handed over Kashyap to the EOU which, along with the Tamil Nadu police team, interrogated him on how he shot and circulated the fake videos. One of his associates, Rakesh Tiwari from Gopalganj, had told police that they had shot one of the videos at Jakkanpur, Patna. Another accused in the case, Aman Kumar, has been arrested from Jamui. Now only Yuvraj Singh, another YouTuber, is absconding.”

Kashyap, who completed his civil engineering from a Pune college in 2016, started his YouTube channel, ‘Sach Tak News’, in 2018. He tried to make his YouTube channel stand out by questioning government officials on problems concerning him. The son of an Army personnel, he contested elections from the Chanpatia Assembly segment in West Champaran in 2020 and won over 9,200 votes. Following this, he became a more aggressive YouTuber.

Bettiah journalist Ramendra Kumar said, “He would cover petty local news. Since he spoke loudly and took up issues affecting people with local officials, he cultivated a following.”