The Mumbai Police Cyber Cell will further investigate the case, police said. (Representative)
Bombay:
Twitter accounts run from foreign countries, some of them run by ‘bots’, were used to spread slanderous messages against the government of Maharashtra and the Mumbai police after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput , according to a report by cyber experts, city police said on Tuesday.
Numerous Twitter accounts that spread false or defamatory messages about Mr. Rajput’s suicide and his investigation have been found to be run by “bots” (software designed to tweet and retweet content), according to the experts’ report.
These accounts were managed from outside India, from places such as China, Panama, Hong Kong and Nepal, he said.
Some accounts that were managed from India used proxy servers to hide the user’s identity, according to the report.
The number of such suspicious accounts was around over 1.5 lakh, and the number of bots involved in the operation was over 1,000, police said.
Immediately after Mr. Rajput’s death in June, many new Twitter accounts surfaced and started sending messages with “negative feelings” against the government of Maharashtra, the Mumbai police and even began to slander the commissioner. Mumbai Police Station (Param Bir Singh), according to the report.
Different hashtags were used for this, and some fake accounts of prominent figures such as Bollywood actors were used to “execute libel on the social media platform,” according to the report.
At least 19 hashtags and mentions such as JusticeforSSR, ParamBirScam, ParamBirSinghResign, SanjayRaut, Officeof UT, AUThackeray, BabyPenguin were investigated by the team of cyber and forensic experts.
The report confirmed suspicions that robots were being used to spread defamatory messages, police said in a statement.
Now, many of those accounts have been deleted, or negative messages are being deleted to escape the scanners of investigators, they said.
The Mumbai Police Cyber Cell will further investigate the matter, they added.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
