Chandigarh: Politics over purported AI-generated videos of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann heated up in Punjab Thursday, with the BJP questioning the association between Mann and Jagmandeep Samra, a Canada-based Indian man accused of creating and circulating the videos.
While BJP spokesperson Vineet Joshi said the CM’s complete silence on the videos was “deafening”, AAP targeted the BJP for stooping to “character assassination” of Mann after having failed to pin him down over anything else. Joshi also insisted that the CM should clarify “that he does not know Samra, has never travelled with him, nor has Samra ever organised his foreign tours”.
Amid back-to-back press conferences by BJP and AAP, Mann briefly addressed media persons’ questions about the videos Thursday, saying the BJP had nothing to offer except “fakeness”.
The videos purportedly show the Punjab CM with some women in a room. The Punjab Police, lodging an FIR against Samra, dismissed the matter as nothing more than an attempt by a disgruntled miscreant, once known to the CM, to malign the latter’s image.
But the controversy has shone the spotlight on a curious figure. This is not the first time that the accused, Jagmandeep Singh Samra alias Jugnu, a resident of Canada, has made headlines. In 2020, he was booked in two cases of immigration fraud. Two years later, he escaped from a hospital where he was undergoing treatment while in jail. In November 2023, he cropped up in the infamous ‘Tomar tapes’ controversy.
Interestingly, Samra himself talks about all the allegations against him in a string of YouTube videos that he regularly puts out.
So who is Jagamandeep Karma? ThePrint finds out:
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‘Tomar tapes’, cannabis farmer with thousands of followers
According to his social page, Samra is a blueberry and cannabis farmer in Canada. He claims to have also launched the “Khalas coin”, a crypto currency. Several posts on his Facebook relate to announcements about the currency.
The Indian-origin man first put out the Mann video on two Facebook pages in his name—each with over 30,000 followers—and his personal and business Instagram accounts with over 20,000 followers. He even claims he will pay a million dollars to anyone who proves these videos are not authentic but AI-generated.
Samra has also declared on his social media videos that these clips are “just a trailer” and he has eight such videos that he will release in the coming days. Moreover, he alleges he has similar videos of other senior AAP leaders.
Reacting to the FIR against him, Samra wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday that he was “least bothered” about it, adding that even if “the government shut down” his Facebook pages, he had other means of making the videos public.
Samra first made the news in November 2023 after the release of the infamous ‘Tomar tapes’ where his purported conversations with former Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar’s son Devendra Tomar about a financial deal went viral. Samra had claimed that Tomar junior was talking to him about parking their wealth in Canadian banks.
The ‘Tomar tapes’ had become a political hot potato ahead of the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls that year, with the state Congress calling it “the biggest corruption scandal involving a BJP central minister”. The then Union minister had then called the tapes fake, and a political conspiracy against him.
नरेंद्र सिंह तोमर के बेटे देवेंद्र तोमर के करोड़ों का लेनदेन करते वायरल वीडियो मामले में नया खुलासा हुआ है। वीडियो कॉल पर मंत्री पुत्र से बात कर रहे शख़्स ने नया वीडियो जारी कर पूरी बातचीत की पुष्टि की है।
यह पूरा मामला 100 या 500 करोड़ का नहीं बल्कि 10000 करोड़ का होना बताया जा… pic.twitter.com/OdBVoot6bR
— MP Congress (@INCMP) November 14, 2023
According to senior police officers investigating the latest case against him, in 2020, two cases of immigration fraud were registered against Samra in Faridkot and Bathinda.
Samra was arrested in the Faridkot case. According to the police, he was denied bail in this case in September 2021. The court order, accessed by ThePrint, states that Samra had allegedly cheated a Ferozepur resident of Rs 65 lakh. The complainant said he paid the money to Samra through an immigration agency in Jalandhar to get his family a visa for Canada.
In June 2022, Samra managed to escape while he was admitted to a Faridkot hospital, and has been on the run ever since.
It isn’t clear how he managed to reach Canada, police sources said, though another FIR was registered against him for evading arrest. “All we know is that he first went to Delhi and then to Nepal from where he went to Canada,” said a senior police officer.
In one of his videos posted Tuesday, Samra even referred to his escape, saying he won’t be deterred by an FIR against him. He posted a copy of the FIR lodged over his escape, as well.
According to the police, Samra was declared a proclaimed offender by a court in January 2023, and a Look Out Circular was issued against him in March 2023.
Peeved with Mann
In an interview with a local YouTube channel in November 2023, Samra claimed his grandfather was a “well-known freedom fighter from Punjab”. On his Facebook page, he claims he has a Master’s degree in English Literature from Ranbir College, Sangrur.
He even claimed to have once protested outside the Parliament in Ottawa as he was upset that a Jalandhar-based doctor who wanted to go to Canada for treatment for drug addiction was denied a visa, but Bhagwant Mann, who was a comedian at the time, was granted one for an entertainment show.
Last year, Samra claims he was actively engaged with a Patiala-based NGO, Kisan Mazdoor Cooperative International (KMCI) that launched a drive to hire young people to train farmers in Punjab to create their own brand of organic farm products. However, the NGO had held a press conference last year stating that Samra had offered to invest several crores in the project like other NRIs, but once these youth and farmers started joining their movement, Samra started using the official website of the KCMI to sell his crypto currency to them.
Political slugfest continues
At a press conference Thursday, BJP spokesperson Vineet Joshi said the people of Punjab have the right to know if the Mann videos are fake and if the CM knows the accused.
Mann’s media adviser Baltej Pannu addressed another press conference, alleging that Punjab BJP president Ashwani Sharma and prominent supporters of the party had been spreading these fake videos.
“These videos have been declared as fake by the court which has ordered that these be immediately taken down from social media within 24 hours,” said Pannu. The Punjab cyber cell had approached the district court in Mohali for permission to take down the Facebook and Instagram pages of the accused. “The court has clearly said that wherever these videos have been shared should also be taken down,” Pannu added.
Speaking to ThePrint Pannu said: “The CM has made it clear that the videos are fake and that is enough to silence those asking these questions.”
Earlier in the day, state BJP chief Sharma had posted a screenshot of the video on X, saying: “A person who holds a press conference over trivial matters has not spoken out over this. Why are you so quiet Bhagwant Mann ji.”
ਜਿਹੜਾ ਬੰਦਾ ਹਰ ਛੋਟੀ ਗੱਲ ‘ਤੇ ਪ੍ਰੈਸ ਕਾਨਫਰੰਸ ਕਰਦਾ ਸੀ,
ਉਹ ਆਪਣੀ ਕਥਿਤ ਵੀਡੀਓ ‘ਤੇ ਇੰਨਾ ਚੁੱਪ ਕਿਉਂ ਹੈ?
ਪੰਜਾਬ ਨੂੰ ਜਵਾਬ ਚਾਹੀਦਾ ਹੈ, @BhagwantMann ਸਾਹਿਬ, ਸਪੱਸ਼ਟੀਕਰਨ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਜਾਵੇ #BhagwantMann #AAPPunjab pic.twitter.com/r60nIzmbzH
— Ashwani Sharma (मोदी का परिवार) (@AshwaniSBJP) October 23, 2025
Addressing yet another press conference, AAP MP Malwinder Kang listed out multiple social media accounts of BJP leaders and supporters saying they had shared the video. “Many of these persons are those who are followed by the Prime Minister. The BJP is trying its best to corner the CM over fake videos as it has not been able to find a single fault in the functioning of the chief minister ever since the Aam Aadmi Party came to power almost 4 years ago,” said Kang.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)