The Opposition parties in Punjab Thursday accused senior officers of the Patiala Police of plotting to prevent their candidates from filing nomination papers for the December 14 zila parishad and panchayat samiti polls. They also claimed that nomination papers of their candidates were torn or snatched away, allegedly at the behest of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, even as Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal shared an audio clip, purportedly of Patiala Senior Superintendent of Police Varun Sharma directing his subordinates to block Opposition candidates from reaching nomination centres. Both the AAP and the Patiala Police denied the charge as baseless.

The Patiala Police initially said that “a fake AI-generated video is being circulated” …”with malicious intent to mislead the pu

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