During the second half of the Monsoon Parliament session Home Minister Rajnath Singh addressed the recent mob lynching incidents. Mr Singh further stressed on the topic of how social media was misused to spread fake news.
However, the Congress was dissatisfied by Mr. Singh’s statement and staged a walkout from the lower House. The Home Minister was quoted, “These are unfortunate incidents. We had issued an advisory on this recently, and one in 2016 also. Social media being used to spread fake news and rumours is also a reason. We have asked social sites for regulation.”
Before Mr. Singh began speaking about the lynching cases, the Congress gave an adjournment notice to discuss a new law for lynching. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor stated, “The Home Minister’s statement in Lok Sabha was not satisfactory at all. That is why we staged a walkout from the House. This is not a game of ping pong that states and the Centre keep shifting responsibilities.”
Lynching is a growing problem in India and social media is making it easier to spread hatred. In 2018, a number of cases have been reported of mob lynching due to fake news.
Two men were beaten to death in Assam’s Guwahati after a mob mistook them to be child kidnappers. So far the police are yet to arrest the mob behind this incident.
Fake news floated on social media about the presence of child kidnappers from Dokmoka in Assam. Locals assumed two men traveling to Dokmoka were the child kidnappers and attacked them.
