227 cases filed in Maharashtra over fake news, rumours

A total of 227 cases have been registered in connection with fake news, rumours and hate speech over social media in the State ever since the imposition of nationwide lockdown, according to Maharashtra Cyber Department on Friday.

Out of the 227 cases, 219 are (FIR) Cognizable and eight are Non-Cognizable cases.

In total 46 accused have been arrested while 170 have been identified. All concerned police units are taking swift action with regard to the arrests and consecutive preventive action.

Out of the total arrested accused preventive action as per 107 CrPC is being carried out on eight.

"There has been a rising trend of hate speech cases in the last seven days, out of total registered cases, 120 are about hate speech on social media. The other major category is rumors/fake news about corona with 76 cases while other misinformation cases are 31," said the Cyber department.

WhatsApp (104 cases), Facebook (75 cases), Tiktok (three cases) and Twitter (three cases) are mostly misused by perpetrators for these activities, the department informed.

Takedown notices have been issued to all concerned platforms of social media. So far 32 posts have been removed. Out of the total cases, 104 are of WhatsApp and due to the nature of technology and encryption, posts on the app can be removed.

In the remaining 85 cases, notices have been issued to platforms and the removal process is in progress. "It has been observed that extortion emails have been received by many people in the last few days. In such emails, a password is sent to the victim through email or a browser history showing accessed pornwebsites," said the department.

"Then money in bitcoin is demanded. Such emails have become rampant. This may be due to the data breach event. We advise all users to update password and other relevant security details regularly," it added.

( With inputs from ANI )