In the last about three months, over 100 defamatory posts on political leaders and historical figures have been removed from different social networking sites after requests were made by the Pune city police. With the Assembly elections approaching, the police are closely monitoring the social media.
Networking websites like Facebook, video sharing platform YouTube and phone messenger WhatsApp have seen extensive use during the elections in the recent past, leaving the police with no option but to keep a constant eye on these websites. In May this year, defamatory posts on social networking sites about Maratha king Shivaji and the late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, which were later shared via phone messengers, had led to violence in various parts of Pune.
Investigations by the police had revealed that hours before the murder of 24-year-old Mohsin Shaikh in Hadapsar area in June, the situation in various parts of the city was tense as several communally sensitive messages were circulating.
Story continues below this ad
A senior officer with the Pune city police said: “In the last three months, we have asked social networking and video sharing websites to remove over 100 defamatory posts about political leaders and historical figures. These include photos, videos, Facebook pages etc. We have a team that monitors these websites round the clock, searching for such posts. A request is then sent to the respective websites for the removal of the post or page. It takes 24 to 48 hours for the websites to comply.”
In a recent incident, a case was registered at the Sangvi police station against a youth from Kalewadi for allegedly spreading defamatory message on WhatsApp about an NCP leader from Pimpri-Chinchwad.
Another officer added: “It has been observed that such pages and posts are created again once removed. We have to request again for their removal in such cases. It is very difficult to trace these people as such posts are made from proxy addresses. There is no doubt that the only motive of these posts is to create communal tension and use them for political gains.”
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Branch) Shrikant Pathak said: “There is a lot of political activity on the social networking platforms. And free messenger services like WhatsApp have made spreading messages very easy and fast. Through WhatsApp groups, a message can be spread to thousands of people in a short time. We must admit that we cannot monitor the activities on WhatsApp groups. But we appeal to people to report to us immediately if they come across any defamatory or communally sensitive message on these platforms.”
Story continues below this ad
DCP Pathak said they are closely monitoring activities on social media through the Cyber Crime Cell and “information is shared with the election cell under the special branch”.
An officer from the cyber cell said: “There has been criticism that blocking of such posts is suppressing freedom of expression. But one must look at the nature of the posts that we have asked for removal. Most of these are obscene and defamatory posts about leaders of all parties. In some of the posts, faces of these leaders are morphed. In some, very obscene language is used. Some posts also contain communally sensitive matter.”
3 min read
