In what could snowball into a major issue, the Mumbai Police is on a hot chase of people and groups who have targeted them and top officials in the wake of the Sushant Singh Rajput case.
According to reports, over 80,000 fake accounts were created on various social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram across countries and continents.
As part of the campaign, Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh, who is an officer of the rank of Director General of Police, had also been targeted over the last three months.
“Several social media account holders are trolling the Mumbai Police commissioner on different platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and are using abusive language against him and the force,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber) Rashmi Karandikar said.
She said that two FIRs have been registered against those account holders under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act.
“Most of these accounts are fake and we will be taking action against all those fake account holders,” she said.
One FIR was filed against a person who used a morphed image of the official Twitter account of Mumbai Police Commissioner recently.
“We have started the probe in both matters,” she said.
As per the Cyber Police’s preliminary analysis, the slanderous or abusive posts were uploaded from India and even several countries in Europe, Scandinavia, south-east Asia and other global locations targeting the Mumbai Police.
Many of the posts used hashtags #justiceforsushant #sushantsinghrajput and #SSR – that were trending on popular social media platforms.
Activists like Prashant Bhushan and Maha Vikas Aghadi government constituents have welcomed the development.
Maharashtra Housing Minister and NCP leader Dr Jitendra Awhad said that 80,000 fake accounts were created all around the world to abuse, malign Mumbai Police and that the larger conspiracy was to malign the Maharashtra Government.
“80,000 fake accounts were created on various social media platforms on June 14 to discredit Mumbai police and Maharashtra government over the investigation into the death of SSR. Mumbai Police Com has asked the Cyber Cell to investigate and register cases under the IT Act. Great!,’ he tweeted.
“To be honest, action is never taken on fake accounts and trollers because police never had faced the fire in the SSR case they investigated…What next?,” he tweeted.
“Welcome the decision to investigate the social media racket in the SSR case as demanded by me. Soon, we will share very crucial information to the government with respect to social media accounts which were solely generated by the BJP IT Team to promote conspiracy theory in SSR case and defame Maharashtra,” state Congress General Secretary and spokesperson Sachin Sawant said.
Shiv Sena spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Priyanka Chaturvedi said: “After Mumbai Police revealed that they are investigating 80,000 plis social media handles created to defame Maharashtra government and Mumbai Police. There is a rush of BJP MPs wanting to take up the coveted opening of beings trolls in the IT cell. They realise its the best way to rise.”(sic)