Lockdown: 230 social media offences registered in Maharashtra

Mumbai, Apr 18 () Maharashtra Cyber has registered230 social media offences across the state during the lockdownfor the coronavirus outbreak, with hate speeches leading thelist at 122 cases, officials said on Saturday.

An official said monitoring of platforms likeFacebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Tiktok etc had shown that hatespeeches were rising fastest among all offences on socialmedia in the past few days.

"We have arrested 46 people, and 170 have beenidentified for such speeches. After hate speeches, theoffences committed most on social media are spreading fakenews and rumours about the coronavirus. We have registered 77cases for this, and 31 cases related to misinformation," headded.

"Beed district has highest 27 cases of hate speech,rumours, fake news and misinformation on social mediaplatforms, and Pune rural has 17 cases. Mumbai and Kolhapurhave 16 offences each," he said.

In Beed, a man was booked after he tried to connectthe coronavirus outbreak to a particular community, while inSaykheda in Nashik, a man had forwarded fake news about thenumber of COVID-19 patients, he said. DCBNM BNM