HYDERABAD: Recording an offence and making it viral on social media has become the recent trend. Sometimes the crime is so heinous that we question the conscience of the people who video-graph the whole incident while they could have made an effort to stop it.
Assistant commissioner of police for Cyber Crime, Rachakonda, Harinath said that we cannot say that video-graphing a crime happening at a place at a defined time, and then making it viral on social media, is crime. “This is because most of the time it does happen that, when a crime takes place, people do not know whom to report. So they take a video of it and put it on the social media to ensure that the matter reaches out to the authority concerned,” he said.
“However, it is always suggested that while taking the video, the spectators should also dial up ‘100’ to seek police intervention and ensure that the matter is taken care of, video-graphing a crime is not an offence in anyway as the video acts as a evidence in the court of law, which helps us in nabbing the offenders.
We have not made arrests of people pertaining to such cases,” he added.
On the other hand, when contacted, Rachna Reddy, a High Court advocate said that video-graphing a crime taking place, without making an effort to stop the same, would be counted under ‘Abetment to crime’ which is punishable under IPC Section 107. “In such a case, one can face imprisonment starting from four to seven years and also a fine which would be decided by the court,” she said.
Naresh Vadlamani, chief consultant psychiatrist said that there are three types of people who tend to do such kinds of things: first when a person takes a video of a crime, he is becoming a part of the crime and seeks sadistic pleasure from the same; the second type of people are those with histrionic personality, who think that, by capturing such events and putting it on social media, they can grab the attention of the people and later they can use the same video to blackmail and the third category are those set of people who are genuine who use it to help the police crack the case.
“However, most of the time the first two sections of the people are the ones who do video- graphing,” he said.
