Punjab police blocks 108 social media accounts over COVID-19 hate propaganda

The Punjab Police has blocked multiple accounts across various social media platforms for allegedly spreading hate propaganda on COVID-19. The action follows Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh's order of crackdown against widespread rumour-mongering and spread of fake news or spiteful videos by anti-social elements on social media platforms, intentionally to spread hatred, misinformation and disaffection.

Chandigarh: The Punjab Police on Wednesday blocked 38 Facebook, 49 Twitter and 21 YouTube accounts/links for allegedly spreading vicious propaganda on COVID-19.

A total of 151 accounts/links of Facebook, 100 of Twitter, four of Instagram and 37 of YouTube have been reported to the concerned Facebook, Twitter and Google authorities, with 121 FIRs registered so far at various police stations across Punjab.

Disclosing this, Dinkar Gupta, Director General of Police (DGP) said the Punjab police's Bureau of Investigations (BoI) had taken up the matter of blocking the spiteful accounts or links of anti-national and anti-social elements with the Cyber Law Division, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, following which 108 accounts/links have been blocked so far. Further action on the remaining accounts is awaited, he said.

Gupta said the competent authorities of the concerned social media platforms had also been requested to provide information of users.

"Suitable legal action will be initiated against the miscreants under the relevant provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Indian Penal Code as soon as the user information is received," he added.

According to Arpit Shukla, Director BoI, the State Cyber Crime Cell, Punjab, has also appealed to the people not to share any kind of unverified or unauthentic posts, news, videos or stories regarding COVID on social media platforms, in the interest of the safety, security and maintenance of public order in the State of Punjab.

The Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh had ordered the crackdown amid widespread rumour-mongering and spread of fake news or spiteful videos by anti-social elements on social media platforms, intentionally to spread hatred, misinformation and disaffection.

The Chief Minister has repeatedly expressed concern over the loss of lives resulting from delayed testing as people misled by these fake posts/videos are not going for testing and treatment to hospitals, an official spokesperson pointed out.

On the directives of the Chief Minister, the Punjab Police has launched a drive to counter the notorious elements responsible for spreading of misinformation and hate content in the society.

ANI