Fake social media messages fuel latest mob lynchings in India 

On June 8, two young men, Nilotpal Das and Abhijit Nath, from Guwahati, the largest city of Assam, had gone to a picnic spot in in a remote village of Karbi Anglong district to visit went to Kangthilangso, a famous waterfal and were viciously attacked on their return by a mob that accused them of being "child lifters".

A video clip of the lynching was widely shared on social media, which showed Das pleading with folded hands: "Don't kill me ... Please don't beat me. I am an Assamese … Please let me go."

The attack was prompted by rumours spread via telephone calls and WhatsApp messages that the two were fleeing in a black SUV with a kidnapped child.

Their brutal deaths is just one among the long list of lynching incidents in the country spurred by malicious rumours and doctored videos circulating through social media and WhatsApp for a few months now.

Over 40 people were arrested including those who recorded and uploaded the video. Many thought the boys were ‘xopadhora’ or child-lifters, a popular myth among various communities in Assam.

Assam is no stranger to such lynchings. Soon after the incident, local newspapers reported two youth were nearly lynched to death in Hojai town because they were mistaken to be child-lifters over the weekend. In another rural pocket, an elderly man, Khelan Sengnar, 65, was lynched to death because he was thought to be a sorcerer. Four months ago, two Sikh men from Punjab were mistaken to be child-lifters and beaten by a mob in Kamrup district.

India has seen a phenomenal rise of mob justice and vigilantism in recent months. In some cases, fraudulent video messages showing children being snatched from streets have gone viral, prompting locals to beat up any one who looks unfamiliar or cannot speak the regional language.

Earlier this month villagers in Chandgaon of Aurangabad town in Maharashtra attacked eight people from Pardhi and Bhil tribes thinking they were thieves and police said it was fed by social media rumours. Just a few days earlier, two indigenous community members were beaten to death and six others seriously injured in the same village after a 400-strong mob attacked them on the suspicion that they were robbers.

Investigations show that those who have been beaten to death have no known criminal record and there is no information suggesting their involvement in robbery.

Social media rumours in the southern states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have also triggered widespread mob frenzy last month. So deep is the ‘fear’ in the rural heartlands of these states that “strangers” are becoming prey to these bloodthirsty mobs.

In May, three people were lynched and four others were brutally assaulted after the attacks spurred by panic WhatsApp messages about child-lifting gangs that “smash skulls to devour brains”. The three cases of lynching were reported from Vikarabad, Nizamabad and Yadadri districts.

The Hyderabad police tried to stop the violence with their own social media campaign using the hashtags #HyderabadKillsRumours and #LetThisGoViral. In fact police found that images of dead children purportedly from India were shared but they were found to begin from the war in Syria or Rohingya in Rakhine State, Myanmar.

In Karnataka, a fake WhatsApp video which has circulated widely suggested that a gang from outside the state was stealing children. Late last month, a 26-year-old man, Kaluram, was beaten to death by a mob which mistook him for a child-lifter. The police later identified him as a betel-leaf vendor and hailed from Rajasthan.

In some of the cases, at least 10 people were tied to trees and electricity poles and severely beaten and some of the victims are still critical.

Tamil Nadu too has not been spared when in early May, a group of people from Tiruvannamalai district, around 170 kilometers of capital Chennai, beat a 65-year-old woman to death on the assumption that she was trying to steal a child. Her four relatives, who were also assaulted, suffered serious injuries. A few days later, a mob beat to death a man with mental problems and strung up the body from a bridge near Pulicat Lake.

Disseminating false information on social media is ushering in a dangerous trend in the country especially when it creates social unrest. Real news and information is increasingly getting buried in an avalanche of false information and hoaxes, which are spreading like wild fire in India and creating rifts between various communities, castes and religions

The first major incident of so-called ‘child lifters’ happened in July last year when a rumor that a gang of men supposedly abducted children in Jharkhand that was spread via WhatsApp. It soon mobilised a mob of several hundred people who ended up killing seven men. The rumour proved to be false and the slain men turned out to be innocent.

Two major factors driving this fake news surge is the trend of declining smart phone prices over the past couple of years and the fall in internet data prices. What’s more, India is one of the biggest markets for several social media and communication companies as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp accounts multiply with every passing month.

A study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and IMRB International, a market research firm, concluded that 77 percent of urban internet users and 92 percent of rural users consider mobile phone as the primary device for accessing the internet, largely driven by availability and affordability of smartphones.

Pratik Sinha, the founder of Altnews, a news fact-checking website, believes this is going to be a big challenge and such fake stories will find a lot of circulation in the rural hinterland.

The problem of fake news therefore is not going to go away anytime soon, and discerning the truth is not going to be easy.

(Murali Krishnan is an international radio broadcaster based in Delhi. Views are personal.)