PANJURI KACHARI – The smartphone footage shows the two blood-soaked menpleading for their lives. Moments later they were dead, two more victims oflynchings sparked by rumours spread on Facebook and WhatsApp in India.

The two men were young and well-educated. Gregarious, dreadlocked musicianNilotpal Das, 29, and his businessman friend Abhijeet Nath, 30, were bothfrom Guwahati, capital of the northeastern state of Assam.

On the fateful day last month when they were beaten to death by a crazedvillage mob wielding bamboo sticks, machetes, and rocks, the friends weredriving back from a day in the country, near a popular waterfall.

“He liked to listen to the sounds of nature to find inspiration for hismusic,” his grieving father Gopal Chandra Das, 68, told AFP at their home,the television table in the living room now a shrine to his son.

Viral rumours about kidnappers, spread through Facebook and WhatsApp, haveled to the lynching deaths of some 20 people in the last two months inIndia, according to a tally from local media reports.

Indian authorities have scrambled to respond but awareness campaigns,public alerts and internet blackouts have had limited success in deterringthe spread of misinformation.

Instead, officials blamed WhatsApp for the “irresponsible and explosivemessages” being shared by its 200 million Indian users — the company’slargest market.

WhatsApp said it was “horrified” by the violence and promised action. Thesocial media giant took out full-page advertisements in Indian newspapersoffering “easy tips” to sort fact from fiction on its platform.

“Together we can fight false information”, the slick adverts declared.——————————

*Child kidnappers *——————————

On their June 8 excursion, the two men were unaware that “fake news” onchild traffickers had been spreading on social media in the area.

In the isolated, impoverished district of Karbi Anglong, Facebook andWhatsApp have become the new word of mouth, and messages on the platforms– however outlandish — are often taken as gospel.

Late in the day, the two men were sitting by a stream when a villagerconfronted them, causing an altercation. The young men left in their car ina hurry, but their antagonist warned the next village they were coming.

“He made a phone call. He said that child kidnappers were on the way, thatthey needed to be stopped,” said Gulshan Daolagupu, deputy division chiefof Karbi Anglong.

The mob surrounded the car on the country road. Convinced they had caughtthe child kidnappers, they launched a savage attack, posting videos of thekillings online.

The images shocked India.

An enquiry is under way to establish whether the suspect who instigated theattack, a 35-year-old taxi driver, genuinely believed he had caught thepurported child kidnappers or whether he had ulterior motives. Some 50people have been detained over the attack.

“Had social media not been there, had this been 2014 — Facebook was notthere, smartphones were not cheap — this would not have happened,” saidG.V. Siva Prasad, superintendent of police in Karbi Anglong district.

“The speed at which it goes, nobody can address it, it is almost the speedof light.”

One month after the incident, the village of Panjuri Kachari is almostdeserted. Only a few women, children and elderly people remain. The men arebehind bars or on the run.——————————

*It could have been me*——————————

Lynchings based on misjudgement or malicious information are not a newphenomenon in India. But the spread of smartphones and internet access inthe country’s poorest and most isolated areas has exacerbated the problem.

Close to half a billion Indians are online, most accessing the internet viatheir smartphones. India was the fastest growing market for smartphones in2017.

Internet penetration in rural areas, though low at 20 percent, is growing.The tumbling cost of handsets — many priced at well below $100 — coupledwith cheap data plans is attracting many first-time users to the internet.

For researcher Abdul Kalam Azad, the lynchings in Panjuri Kachari must beseen in the particular context of Assam state, which is a patchwork ofethnic tribes and has been routinely hit by intercommunal strife.

“Assam has been experiencing violence for a long time. In this situation ofconflict, fake news become more dangerous, more violent and that’s evidentnow,” he told AFP.

The killing of Nilotpal Das and Abhijeet Nath has resonated broadly amongurban, well-educated Indians and played on perceptions that rural districtsare backward-looking and lawless.

“Everyone could feel: ‘it could have been my son, it could have been me,’”said Ittisha Sarah, 25, a friend of the victims.

“That feeling is impacting people a lot. That it could have been anyone, soinnocent, in that barbaric incident.” – APP/AFP