On July 13, when a 32-year-old, Mohammed Azam, a technology enthusiast and UK- educated IT worker decided to make some children happy by distributing sweets among them, he along with 2 other friends were attacked by a furious mob.
While Noor Mohammad and Salham Eid Al Kubasi managed to escape the situation, Azam was lynched by the mob on false rumours of being a child trafficker. However, all this while nobody talked about the police officers who risked their lives while saving the group of five men from a mob of 200 people.
Reuters spoke to Inspector V.B. Yadwad who was inspecting the accident site and suffered injuries on his back while trying to take control of the situation. Eight police officers rushed to the site out of which two suffered serious injuries.
Photo Credit: Reuters/ Mohammed Salman who survived a mob lynching attack displays the injuries on his back
A thread of fake whatsapp messages among the rural people have triggered a chain of mob lynchings all across the country. The Alwar lynching is only an addition to this wave. While the government is developing a mechanism with messenger application, Whatsapp to figure out a solution, there is an immediate need to develop awareness among the public regarding fake news and authentic news.
Photo Credits: AFP/ A group protesting against the wave of lynchings in Ahmedabad.
Social Media has given the common man the weapon of words, which can lead to more mass destruction than construction. The aim was to minimise censorship and encourage freedom of expression. However, with easy access to mass communication, comes difficult problems. People are using this medium to their heart¡¯s content and are exploiting it to propagate false ideas.
All the lynchings are a result of a few people conniving against the victim who is killed on the basis of a ¡®whatsapp message¡¯ that went viral. Hence, the Uttar Pradesh police decided to recruit digital volunteers who would act as mediators between the rural population and police officers.
Whatsapp is even working on developing a feature that would limit the number of messages being?forwarded to only 5 people, at most. A 'suspicious link detection feature' may also be under process.
Ironically, Azam who faced a sad death was aware of the cons of the digital world. Azam¡¯s own job at Accenture was to review the propriety of video content before it was uploaded to Alphabet Inc¡¯s YouTube, according to Reuters.
Photo Credits: Reuters/ The car damaged during the Bidar mob attack
While the men were enjoying a beautiful scenery as they clicked a selfie beside lush grounds, the mob which had been enraged on whatsapp through fake messages reached Murki where they started deflating the tyres of their car. When the five men questioned them, they screamed that the techie and his group were child lifters.
According to Police, the photos and videos of the men with the caption, ¡°Child kidnappers found in Murki¡± was put up on a 180 member whatsapp group titled, ¡°Mother Murki¡±. ¡°They came here to steal kids. Let¡¯s hit these bastards and kill them!¡± and other abuses were hurled at Azam, Kubassi and Salman who got into the car and tried to flee the scene. However, a roadblock created by the attackers a few metres away stopped the vehicle.
Many of them carried axes in their hands, threw stones at them and dragged them out of the car. This is where Azam got lynched.
Photo Credits: Reuters/Destroyed part of the car seen at the site where Mohammed Azam was lynched
Vijay Biradar, one of the village elders on being questioned why the villagers attacked the men, responded by saying that people were mistaken. ¡°Did you see the Qatari¡¯s face? His big beard?¡± he said. ¡°He looked like a terrorist.¡± Biradar said for the Qatar nationals.
Government¡¯s Track Child portal between January 2012 and March 2017 revealed that around 2,50,000 children had gone missing. Disturbing photos and videos of mutilated bodies of children were being circulated all over India that had made the public furious.??
¡°High alert, please share as much as possible¡± headings were being circulated and villagers in Murki had been hearing about Child Abductor Gangs for the past few months. The problem lies in the fact that while many are not able to read and write, everybody understands photos and videos.
The police however, says that in all the places where grave lynching incidents have taken place, all the messages and reports of operation of child abduction gangs is false.