It turns out that Karnataka's Minister for Primary and Secondary Education, Tanveer Sait, who has been accused of watching porn on his smartphone during a Tipu Jayanti event in Raichur on 10 November, was actually surfing old photos of Melania Trump, the third wife of American President-elect Donald Trump. Melania is a former model.
Senior police officers told Times of India that the "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."
In his report, Rakesh Prakash of TOI wrote that Sait was allegedly watching a 1999 magazine spread of Melania.
Sait was given a clean chit by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who said, "Going by his (Sait's) statement and report that he has given, prima facie I don't feel that he has committed any mistake, because he is seen scrolling."
Sait has said that he was only going through reports of Tipu Jayanti messages pouring in from Mysuru, Kodagu and Chitradurga.
A video footage that went viral allegedly showed him scrolling through photos of skimpily clad women. The BJP had demanded Sait's ouster. Based on Sait's complaint Raichur Police had booked a reporter and a cameraman of a news channel, who had taken the controversial footage, under IPC section 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace).
In the run up to the elections, naked photo-shoots of the now 48-year-old Slovenian-born beauty kept resurfacing. Trump met Melania in September 1998. They were married in January 2005.
(With additional inputs from PTI)