Days after a Karnataka Congress Minister found himself in the soup after he was allegedly “caught watching pornographic images” during a public event, it is reported that the minister was in fact surfing Melania Trump’s images.
On November 10, a regional television news channel broke the story that Education Minister Tanveer Sait was viewing pornographic images on his phone, during Tipu Jayanti celebrations in Raichur.
Rakesh Prakash reports for The Times of India that the said photographs were of former model and US President-elect Donald Trump’s third wife Melania Trump.
According to senior police officials, the photographs were from Melania’s modeling years in the late 1990s.
Left: Photographed for FHM Magazine in 2000 (Photo by George Holz/Contour by Getty Images); Right: Photography by Antoine Verglas, British GQ
“The photographs the minister was allegedly watching were of Melania Trump. Her pictures taken more than 15 years ago gained new traction in the run-up to the US presidential election and after Trump's shock victory last week. Among the many messages sent to the minister's WhatsApp account, Melania photographs, too, popped up on the screen," a senior police official was quoted as saying.
After the controversy broke out, Sait had maintained that he was looking at Tipu pictures on his phone when these pictures came up on a Whatsapp group. The minister also lodged a complaint against the cameraperson and reporter of Kannada news channel TV9, for intentionally causing insult.
Some pictures of semi-nude and skimpily clad women reportedly came up in the same thread when the minister was scrolling through photographs on his phone. TV 9 beamed these pictures continuously, but since they were blurred, one could not make out the exact nature of the pictures.
However, the controversy quickly snowballed into a political fight, with the BJP demanding that the Congress sack the minister immediately.
BJP leader Eashwarappa demanded that the said photographs be made public. The cyber crime branch of CID is currently investigating the matter.