Canada-based non-resident Indian (NRI) Jagmandeep Singh, alias Jagman Samra, who had escaped from a hospital in 2022 after being booked in a Rs 65-lakh cheating case, has become the focal point of a political storm after the Gurugram police registered an FIR over alleged tailoring of a report in connection with the controversial viral video involving Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.
It was Samra who had circulated an objectionable video on social media in October 2025 that Opposition parties and religious bodies claimed showed the CM committing sacrilege and disrespecting Sikh imagery.
CM Mann today claimed that an individual had worn a prosthetic mask and posed as him to mislead the public. He also played a video clip, allegedly showing Samra holding a prosthetic mask.
Samra, who hails from Phaguwala village in Sangrur, is no stranger to controversy. It was on October 23, 2025, that the cyber cell of Mohali had booked Samra for posting “AI-generated vulgar content” of the CM on his Facebook account.
Earlier, he was lodged in the Faridkot Central Jail in a Rs 65-lakh cheating and criminal conspiracy case registered against him in Ferozepur on November 28, 2020. Later, he was admitted to the orthopaedics ward of Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital, Faridkot, on December 23, 2021.
On February 1, 2022, just two months before the elections, he managed to escape from judicial custody by deceiving and misleading jail guards.
After absconding from the hospital, Samra managed to illegally slip out of the country and landed in Canada.
Later, a separate FIR related to the escape was filed against Samra and four jail warders. The Ludhiana police had on October 24, 2025, charged Samra and his son with cheating, criminal conspiracy and forgery.
