Amid the ongoing controversy over animal fat including beef fat and pig fat found in ghee used to make famous laddus of Tirupati Balaji temple in Tirumala, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation has filed an FIR against several social media users for spreading fake claim that Amul supplied the adulterated ghee. Yesterday, Amul had clarified that it never supplied to Tirupati temple after several X users including Congress supporters claimed that Amul replaced Nandini to supply ghee and it was Amul ghee where several animal and plant based fats were found.
Hemant Gauni, Deputy General Manager (Sales) at GCMMF, filed the complaint with the Cyber Crime department of Ahmedabad police, saying that on 20 September, he spotted several users claiming on X that Amul supplied ghee with animal fat to Tirupati temple. He said that the posts on the social media site were made in enmity, to defame and cause harm to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), which owns the Amul brand, by spreading rumours.
As per police, the FIR mentioned seven X handles as accused, which are ‘Spirit of Congress’, ‘Banjara1991’, ‘chandanAIPC’, ‘SecularBengali’, ‘rahul_1700’, ‘profapm’ and ‘prettypadmaja’. Dr. Lavina Sinha, DCP Cyber Crime, said that during investigation, more accounts were found who had posted the fake news, action will be taken against all of them.
Ahmedabad, Gujarat: Regarding the complaint registered by the Managing Director of GCMMF (Amul) concerning fake news spread over the Tirupati prasadam row, Dr. Lavina Sinha (DCP Cyber Crime) says, "We have lodged an FIR, after which we have started investigating seven accounts.… pic.twitter.com/ACM95m9Wpa
— IANS (@ians_india) September 21, 2024
She said that police will be seeking details from 𝕏 and Meta about the accounts. The DCP added that the FIR has been registered under BNS sections 336 (4) (forgery), 196(1A) (Promoting enmity), and relevant sections of the IT Act.
Jayen Mehta, Managing Director of GCMMF (Amul), said that the FIR has been filed to stop people from spreading fake news about Amul products. He reiterated that Amul never supplied ghee to Tirupati temple.
After the FIR was filed, several of the X users have deleted the posts spreading the fake news. This included a handle named Spirit of Congress and Mumbai Congress social media general secretary Vidya. However many tweets with the claim are still present on the social media platform.
