Death By Whatsapp!?!

Haters Inc: The messaging app has been hijacked as a platform to spread hate and fake news, leading to lynchings in many states. How do we counter this?

- Sandeep Unnithan

For several days, messages warning about child-lifters on the prowl had pinged on smartphones in Rainpada, a tribal hamlet in Dhule district, 400 km northwest of Mumbai. Then, on July 1, the villagers saw a group of seven tribal nomads from the Davri Gosavi community speaking to a child. A group of around 20 locals, certain these were the child-lifters the WhatsApp video had warned of, pounced on them and began beating them before locking them up in the local gram panchayat office. Two men managed to flee. Soon after, a mob numbering in the hundreds—most had converged on Rainpada from adjacent villages for the weekly market—broke into the office and beat up Bharat Bhosale, Dadarao Bhosale, Bharat Malve, Appa Ingole and Raju Bhosale using whatever they could find—rods, sticks, stones and logs of wood. Two police officers who arrived on the scene and tried to intervene were also attacked. Bharat, Raju and Dadarao died on the spot. Malve and Appa succumbed to their injuries en route to the hospital.

The Dhule incident was only the latest in the series of WhatsApp-transmitted lynchings across the country this year leading to the deaths of 30 people. If technology is a double-edged sword, India felt its sharp edge, the high-speed network’s ability to misinform and inflame. Sixteen such cases have been reported since May 10, from Maharashtra to Tripura.