The advent of fake news and misinformation, primarily through WhatsApp, instigated a series of mob violence and lynchings across the country earlier in the year 2018. In response, the Supreme Court directed that “The state has to act positively and responsibly to safeguard and secure the constitutional promises to its citizens.”
The bench, headed by Justice Dipak Misra,
asserted that an individual or a group cannot take the law into their own hands and deal with another person as though they’re guilty saying, “That is not only contrary to the paradigm of established legal principles in our legal system but also inconceivable in a civilized society that respects the fundamental tenets of the rule of law.”