Hyderabad: A fake ‘red alert’ about a lion from the Nehru Zoological Park escaping and going missing on Thursday morning with an “unofficial” but “officially sanctioned” social media handle of the zoo on X, left senior forest department officials, including the zoo curator scrambling to play down an “attempt to create some social media hype” about the zoo.
In the post, the “unofficially official” handle of the zoo, @nzphyderabadzoo, issued a ‘RED ALERT HYDERABAD’ declaring that a lion went missing from the zoo in the morning and asked people to inform the police if it was spotted by anyone. Apparently, the post was part of a plan to create some “social media hype” for the zoo in the run-up to the release of a movie on a lion this week.
However, this move did not sit well with top forest department officials with Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Head of Forest Force) RM Dobriyal saying in the evening that he ordered the immediate deletion of the post, to prevent unwarranted panic.
Asked about the post, Director of Zoos, Telangana, Sunil Hiremath said was part of a social media campaign to increase interest in the zoo.
He also said that the handle from which the “news” was posted, was managed by a private party, but that this particular entity was approved by the zoo authorities to keep news about the zoo buzzing on social media platforms. He also said a new movie about a lion was about to be released and the plan was to have a two-part post on X taking advantage of the movie release and to get the zoo in the news.
Zoo curator G. Vasantha earlier said she had no knowledge of the post and said no animals escaped from the zoo. All is well, she said, adding that she will inquire into the incident. She also said there was a call from a police officer inquiring if the news was real and that she informed the police official that it was not so.
“An escaped lion from the zoo is the last thing we need. Doing something like this with a fake news post just to grab attention is irresponsible amidst recent reports of a tiger attacking a woman killing her, and then injuring another man, coupled with reports of stray attacks on people by leopards in the state, could have been disastrous for the department,” a senior wildlife official said.
