CID arrests two men for spreading fake news on post-poll violence _ 2 of ABVP

Both the accused are the members of the RSS’s students wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad

According to the CID officer, they started scanning profiles from where such posts had been shared and got in touch with the social networking sites on which they had been shared.

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Snehal Sengupta   |  TT  |  Calcutta   | 08.05.21:  The state CID arrested two men on Friday for allegedly sharing videos of purported fake news related to post-poll violence in Bengal.

The CID had registered a suo motu FIR after several such videos went viral on social networking sites and following complaints from netizens alleging that purported fake news was being circulated by using their photographs without their knowledge or permission, the officer said.

According to the officer, they started scanning profiles from where such posts had been shared and got in touch with the social networking sites on which they had been shared.

The two who have been arrested are Argha Saha and Akash Mondal, both students and members of the RSS’s students wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), in their colleges.

According to the officer, preliminary investigations revealed that while Saha had used his own social media profile to share the videos, Mondal had created a fake profile and shared multiple fake news related to alleged post-poll violence.

“The men have been arrested for sharing fake videos on social media,” said DIG CID (special) Kalyan Mukherjee.

According to another officer, they then started tracking down the IP addresses from where such posts had been shared and zeroed in on the two men who had allegedly done it.

Two teams from the CID had left for Sonarpur in South 24-Parganas and Deganga in North 24-Parganas in search of the accused. Saha was arrested from Sonarpur and Mondal was rounded up from Deganga, the officer said.

The cellphones which they allegedly used to access the internet to share the videos have been seized, the officer said.

The men have been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 120B (criminal conspiracy). If convicted, they can be sent to jail for two years.

The Telegraph tried to contact the BJP’s spokesperson for the Bengal unit, Samik Bhattacharya, for the party’s statement on the arrest, but he did not answer calls. He did not reply to a text message either.

The BJP’s Bengal unit president, Dilip Ghosh, too, did not take calls. Nor did he reply to a text message from this newspaper.

Oxygen arrest

An 18-year-old youth was arrested for allegedly stocking medical oxygen cylinders without valid documents on Friday.

Police have seized two filled and one empty cylinder of 10litre capacity.