A report by the state home department of Maharashtra has revealed that the Cyber department has registered 113 FIRs for spreading misinformation and spreading communal/casteist hatred on social media amid the nationwide lockdown across the country due to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
A total of 113 FIRs have been registered by Maharashtra Cyber department during the #coronaviruslockdown period for spreading misinformation and for spreading communal/casteist hatred on social media, according to a state Home Dept report
— ANI (@ANI) April 7, 2020
As the masses are staying indoors amid the lockdown, people are sticking to social media where they get enough and explosive pieces of information to pass time. The government had already declared that the rumor-mongering especially related to Wuhan coronavirus during lockdown will be punished. However, it’s still not yet clear precisely what kind of posts will be regarded as ‘spreading hatred’ considering the fact that ‘secular’ governments use such laws to silence criticism of Radical Islam.
Earlier on Tuesday, an FIR was lodged against the members of Tablighi Jamaat for fleeing quarantine and violating official preventive orders in Mumbai’s Azad Maidan Police station but only 10 of them could have been successfully traced. Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said that about 50 Tablighi Jamaat meet attendees in Maharashtra are on the run and their phones are switched off. He asserted that Fifty people who returned to Maharashtra from Tablighi Jamaat are missing. They are being searched. Out of 1400 people who returned from Tablighi Jamaat, 1350 people were tested. 50 people are still hiding and their phones are switched off.
As per Union Home Ministry, 4421 people in India have been contracted the novel coronavirus while 114 have succumbed to the disease and 326 have recovered. Maharashtra is the worst-hit state by the pandemic with the highest number of coronavirus cases in the country with the tally of affected at 868 and 48 fatalities as of the time of writing this report.
