Bengaluru: All police stations in India’s IT capital will soon have trained personnel who can track hateful, provocative and misleading messages online as law-enforcement authorities in Bengaluru look to contain one of the biggest threats to communal peace in Karnataka.
“Every police station will have some… persons who have been given some specialised training regarding monitoring of social media, especially with regards to hate posts, provocative, misleading posts,” Bengaluru City Police Commissioner B. Dayananda told ThePrint Monday.
This will be in addition to the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government’s move to set up a separate department to ‘fact-check’ news and all social media posts.
Bengaluru, one of India’s biggest economic centres and hub for all things technology, has also witnessed communally sensitive incidents mostly triggered by social media.
“Whatever happens in law and order, the origin (of the problem) is through social media. Like it happened in DJ Halli, KJ Halli. Keeping that in mind, our capacity-building has been improved,” the police commissioner said.
In 2020, at the very peak of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, a mob gathered outside the residence of the then Congress legislator from Pulekeshi Nagar, Akhanda Srinivas Murthy, after his nephew put up a derogatory Facebook post on Prophet Mohammed.
Despite the arrest of the MLA’s nephew, the mob only grew in number and went on a rampage across several localities in the eastern part of the city and even torched two police stations, among other public property.
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‘Watch on social media’
The Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in Karnataka has initiated the process of preparing guidelines for the ‘fact-checking’ department and enforcing strict laws to punish anyone posting information with malicious intent.
“Spreading misinformation with malicious intent will be a crime,” Priyank Kharge, Karnataka Minister for Information Technology, Biotechnology, Rural Development & Panchayat Raj (RDPR), told ThePrint.
Among the first announcements made by the Siddaramaiah-led government was that it would do all it can to to contain the spread of misinformation in the state that was leading to communal discord.
The police commissioner said that each station will have 1-2 constable-level officials who will be trained to track social media accounts.
Bengaluru also has a CEN (cybercrime, economic offences & narcotics) police station in every zone along with a cybercrime department that will be the backbone of the new operation.
“There is a proper monitoring watch kept on social media… all the channels (platforms),” Dayananda said.
All 112 law-and-order police stations across Bengaluru city will have the minimal resources required to accept complaints in this regard as well as probe them. The commissioner added that the police are using mostly open-source tools to help build this system rather than depend on proprietary ones.
There will be no additional hiring for the same, he said, and only existing personnel will be trained. He also said that at the office of the deputy commissioner of police, there is already a set-up with trained personnel to track online activities.
The commissioner said the police are likely to take the help of the government and private resources for training but not for solving crimes.
The state government is also planning to empanel some private fact-checking sites to help with debunking fake news.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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