Centre asks states to check incidents of mob lynching fulled by rumours of child lifting

Centre on Thursday asked the states and Union Territories (UTs) to check incidents of mob lynching fuelled by rumours of child lifting on social media.

In an advisory, the Home Ministry had urged the states and UTs to keep a watch for early detection of rumours of child lifting and initiate effective measures to counter them.

“The Centre has asked the States and UTs to take measures to prevent incidents of mob lynching fuelled by rumours of child lifting circulating on social media,” a Home Ministry spokesperson said.

More than 20 people had been killed over the last two months on suspicion of child lifting, the latest being the killing of five men in Dhule district of Maharashtra.

Centre had asked the states and UTs to direct district administrations to identify vulnerable areas and conduct community outreach programmes to create awareness.

The states and UTS had also been directed to properly investigate the complaints of child abduction or kidnapping to instil confidence among the affected people.

Two people were on June 28 lynched in Tripura and two in Assam last month on suspicion of child lifting.

The government had on Tuesday directed WhatsApp to immediately take steps to prevent the spread of irresponsible and explosive messages, saying the social media platform cannot evade its responsibility.

Outlining the steps it had taken to curb abuse of its platform, WhatsApp in its response to a notice sent by IT Ministry, said it has the ability to prevent spam but blocking can be done only based on user reports since it cannot see the content of private messages.

However, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had demanded greater accountability from social media platforms, saying finding technological fixes to identify mass-circulation of messages on a particular issue, in a particular area cannot be ‘rocket science’.

(With inputs from agencies)