Mumbai: Mumbai Police's cyber cell has registered two First Information Reports (FIRs) against the accused who had created fake accounts on social media to troll the Commissioner of Police (CP) Parambir Singh and orchestrated a campaign to malign the image of the police force in connection with the probe in the death of the 34-year-old actor, Sushant Singh Rajput. The police commissioner had said that 80,000 fake social media accounts had been created across nine countries, as part of the campaign.
After Rajput was found hanging from a ceiling fan at his Bandra residence on June 14, Mumbai Police had reached the spot and registered an Accidental Death Report (ADR) in the matter. The actor's family, however, accused the police force of poor investigation and alleged that Rajput was murdered, giving birth to a series of conspiracy theories and the virtual bashing of Mumbai Police on social media.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber) Dr Rashmi Karandikar said that after it was observed that Mumbai Police CP Parambir Singh was being trolled on various social media platforms wherein abusive language was used, maligning the image of Mumbai Police, a case was registered. "Several social media account holders are trolling the Mumbai Police commissioner on different platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and are using abusive language against him and the force. Hence, an FIR has been registered against those account holders under section 67 of the Information Technology (IT) Act. It was revealed that most of these accounts are fake and we will be taking action against all those fake account holders," DCP Karandikar said.
Meanwhile, Mumbai Cyber Police also registered a case against an unidentified accused who had used a morphed image of the official Twitter account of Mumbai CP recently and made malicious comments. "We have already started a probe in both the matters," said DCP Karandikar.
Mumbai Police identified over 80,000 fake accounts created on various social media platforms after Rajput's death, with the sole intent to ‘discredit’ the city police and the Maharashtra government. According to police, in an internal report submitted to CP Singh, it was learnt that the posts maligning Mumbai Police's image had been uploaded on social media platforms from different countries like France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovenia, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand and Romania.
"Multiple fake accounts on social media were created to target Mumbai Police with abusive tones. Our cyber cell is conducting a thorough investigation into this matter and all those found violating the law will be prosecuted under relevant sections of the Information Technology Act," CP Parambir Singh had said on Monday. A senior IPS officer said that police have identified these posts trending on social media in various languages with hashtags like #SSRDeath, #JusticeForSSR, #SushantSinghMurder among others.
