Recently, a video went viral showing an officer of the Indian Police Service (IPS) of the Maharashtra cadre, surrounded by some people, all of them listening over the speakerphone to Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, telling her to stop the legal action she was taking against illegal sand and soil mining in Solapur.

Krishna is the sub-divisional police officer and had gone to Kurdu village in Solapur district to act against illegal sand and soil mining.

During the police operation, a local member of Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) called him and handed the phone to Krishna. In the video that went viral, a voice, attributed to Ajit Pawar, could be heard telling the officer to stop the action.

In the days of artificial intelligence and deepfake, it is easy not only to fake voices but also visuals of any person. As a police officer, Krishna did what is expected of her in her role; she said she did not recognise the voice and asked the person on the phone to call on her official number to establish the identity of the person on the other end.

Obviously, if the person on the other side, purportedly Ajit Pawar, had called up on her official number, not only would she have been able to confirm that it was indeed the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, but that would also have gone on record that she had received a call from the minister, had there been a legal issue any time later.

Ajit Pawar has........

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