Tamil Nadu cops on trail of rumour-mongers

Chennai: Sending a loud and clear signal to those spreading rumours in social networking sites over the Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa’s health, the Cyber Crime Unit of the City Police, arrested two persons, including a software professional for his Facebook Post.

The other person arrested had hosted an audio of a purported conversation of an Apollo staff on the CM who is under treatment. The City Police sources, pursuing a total of 43 cases, indicated they are in the process of cracking more of them.

“We have sent communiqués to the India offices of FB, Twitter, and Youtube with regard to the banning of the malicious and false content besides locking the user IDs that figured in the complaints. We only have the usernames used by the miscreants, and some appear to be using multiple profiles to spread the canards. We have also requested the said offices to help identify such multiple profiles share us with the credentials to trace them subsequently. We had also insisted them to automatically detect and prevent the malicious content being reposted by using different user IDs,” said a senior police official who is privy to the investigation.

The official went on to explain that they had formed special teams comprising cops and cyber security experts to track the culprits and apprehend them.
The two held were tracked with the inputs provided by the Internet Service Providers  (ISPs), helping identify the IP addresses and to trace the users.
The techie was identified as Sathish Kumar from Devanankurichi in Namakkal who admitted to posting the malicious content.

He was arrested based on a complaint from the AIADMK IT Wing Secretary G Ramachandran. The techie had made his postings using an FB id – Satiz Sharma.

Similarly, Madasamy, an AC mechanic, who had hosted an audio in his website www.tamilentertainment.co.in as a conversation featuring an Apollo staff talking about the CM’s health. He was traced to Madurai and his website was subsequently blocked.

Both were booked under sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 505(i) (statements conducing to public mischief), and 505(ii)(b)(c)(b- with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, fear or alarm to the public, or to any section of the public whereby any person may be induced to commit an offence against the State or against the public tranquility; c- punishment for inciting the offence), of the Indian Penal Code. They were remanded to judicial custody and lodged in Puzhal prison.