When a 16-year-old boy from the Nalgonda district in Telangana was arrested along with a 36-year-old farmer in April last year, the teenage student had no idea what he had done wrong.
It was the police who explained to him that forwarding a piece of fake news — in this case, it was about Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, who was down with Covid-19 at the time — without verifying it had landed him in a soup.
His was one of the 218 cases of fake news registered in Telangana in 2021, which — according to the latest National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data — was the highest for any state in the country.
Telangana has contributed to around 25 percent of cases of fake news — nearly one out of every four cases — registered in the country.
Of the total of 882 cases registered in the country, while 218 were reported in Telangana, another 139 cases (16 percent) were reported in Tamil Nadu.
These cases are registered under Section 505 of the IPC, which deals with statements conducing to public mischief.
“The increase in cases registered under this section is due to the enforcement by the police department,” a senior Telangana police official told South First.
“We monitor social media, and people also approach the police to register cases. If some fake news is circulating on social media, people tag the Telangana Police, upon which we investigate. If we deem that the fake news is going to cause any trouble, we register a case,” added the officer.
In the rest of the South Indian states, 45 fake news cases were reported in Andhra Pradesh, 14 in Karnataka, and five in Kerala.
Hyderabad topped the list of cases registered against the spreading of fake news among metropolitan cities in India. The city reported 84 cases of fake news in 2021, followed by 11 in Chennai.
