Two FIRs have been filed against multiple social media account holders and fake accounts for defaming Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook as well as using abusive language against him and the department, Rashmi Karandikar, DCP-Cyber Cell, Mumbai Police told ANI.
Over 80,000 fake accounts were created on various social media platforms on 14 June to discredit Mumbai Police and the Maharashtra government over the ongoing investigation into the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, as per a report by Hindustan Times.
The DCP, Cyber Cell, further told ANI that the first FIR is related to defaming the Mumbai Police Commissioner and abusing the force through social media platforms, whereas the second one has been lodged for using a morphed image of the official Twitter account of Mumbai Police Commissioner.
"The campaign against the Mumbai Police was set up at a time when a number of officers had succumbed to COVID-19 and around 6,000 policemen were infected with the virus. Multiple fake accounts were created on social media to target and defame the Mumbai Police. Our cyber cell is conducting a thorough investigation into the matter", Param Bir Singh told HT.
The cyber unit has reportedly found that the posts were uploaded from different countries like Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovenia, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand, Romania and France.
“We identified the posts in foreign languages because of the hashtags used like #justiceforsushant #sushantsinghrajput and #SSR. We’re verifying more accounts,” a senior IPS officer told the publication.
(With inputs from Hindustan Times)
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