Police today said it will register a case against two prominent social networking sites for uploading of a three-minute video (3:07 mts) purportedly showing four youths being forced to parade naked, apparently by some uniformed personnel at an undisclosed location (some reports name the Sopore area) in Kashmir

"A formal case is being registered against the YouTube and Facebook networks and investigation is on to locate the persons responsible for uploading this baseless and malicious clip," a police spokesman told PTI.

He said police have taken cognisance of the video clip and initial investigations have shown that the video has not been verified as yet and therefore "to attribute it to security forces with the intention of maligning them and spreading disaffection among the people is highly regrettable.

"Action shall also be taken against other organisations who tried to propagate it," he added.

"No one has been able to authenticate the video so far," Home Minister P Chidambaram told reporters in New Delhi while replying to a question on the three-minute video clip uploaded on two prominent social networking sites.

The minister said he had asked security agencies to find out whether anybody featuring in the video had spoken out.

"Until it is authenticated and the persons identified, I think it would be unsafe to rely on such a video," he said.

He did not elaborate on what steps were being taken to ascertain the authenticity of the video. Shockingly, there seemed to be no condemnation of the incident shown on the video from any official quarters, even with caveats that its provenance remained to be established. Nor was any seriousness shown to get to the bottom of the controversial incident pictured.

Is the video genuine?

The video shows four unidentified Kashmiri-looking youngsters being made to parade through what looks like a village, sometimes passing by others, with a male voice constantly abusing in Hindi/Urdu and Kashmiri in the backdrop. 

The youth are shown carrying their clothes in their hands. A male voice asks the youth to move the clothes they are carrying, ostensibly so that their private parts are not covered.

“The video is taken by the accompanying policeman, who records the event during their short journey...he must have recorded it for fun, but luckily it got leaked by an anonymous person,” the comment accompanying the video in one of its postings on the Facebook account “Citizens of Kashmir” claimed.

A senior police officer in the Valley pointed out that it looked like an 'old video' because it appeared to have been shot in autumn and not during the recent protests because the fields seem harvested.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) also questioned the video’s authenticity. “Such a thing is not possible in Kashmir,” CRPF spokesman Prabhakar Tripathi was quoted by the Indian Express as saying. “The video seems manipulated to tarnish the image of the force and police.”

Tripathi said it was hard to imagine how such an incident, if it had happened, could remain under wraps so long. “In this place, even rape doesn’t remain a secret,” he said. “This video can never be proved to be genuine.”

While the men in uniforms are clearly not of the Army, and seem to be wearing the uniform of the J&K Police, the video had earlier done the rounds of Youtube, Facebook and some mailing lists accompanied by such labels as:

• Indian Army torturing Kashmiri youth for a naked parade.
• So Called Disciplined Indian Army Exposes their Shameful Act on Camera in Kashmir
• Indian Army's Shameful Conduct
• "Kashmir's Abu Gharib" [For the infamous Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib]