A total of 56 cases have been registered against those found using derogatory language against communities and political figures in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj and nearly 50 per cent of those booked, have been found using fake details to create an account on social networking websites. This comes after IANS reported on Thursday that Pakistan has been running social media propaganda against India using fake Arab, Christian and Hindu identities to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.
Inspector General (Prayagraj range) K.P. Singh said, "A total of 56 cases were registered between March 23 and April 23. The 56 FIRs were lodged under sections 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups) and 295 A (malicious acts intended to outrage religious feeling of any class insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 65 and 66 of the Information Technology (IT) Act with different police stations in the range."
Forty-three FIRs were registered in Prayagraj alone followed by six in Pratapgarh, four in Fatehpur and three in Kaushambhi. Of these 15 persons have been arrested in Prayagraj, three in Pratapgarh and, one each in Kaushambhi and Fatehpur.
The accused had uploaded derogatory remarks, photos, comments on social media. Majority of them had used fake IDs to create accounts on these social networking websites, according to the police Cyber cell. In the posts, the accused using inflammatory and vulgar remarks to hurt the sentiments of a community or circulated fake news. The accounts were later blocked.
Senior Superintendent of Police (Prayagraj) Satyarth Anirudh Pankaj said, "We have lodged 43 cases with different police stations of the city against those who had allegedly uploaded derogatory content or videos about the novel coronavirus outbreak and the lockdown enforced following the pandemic in past one month."
The IANS report said on Thursday that security agencies and independent social media users after investigation found that the recent hashtags like Islamophia in India on Twitter, were mostly sourced to bots, trolls and people in Pakistan. The idea was to bombard social media with content to generate anti-Modi sentiment in Gulf countries and create a wedge between India and its allies in the Middle East, sources said.
