NEW DELHI – A mob lynched a woman in India after rumours circulated onWhatsApp about child kidnappers, police said Monday, days after themessaging firm said it was curbing the forwarding of messages.
More than 20 people have been killed in similar incidents in the past twomonths, leaving both the Indian authorities and Facebook-owned WhatsAppscrambling to find a solution in its biggest market.
Police said nine people have been arrested and more are being sought afterthey found the middle-aged woman’s mutilated body near a forest area in theSingrauli district of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh on Sunday.
The accused men told police they caught hold of the woman late Saturdayafter finding her moving suspiciously and seeing a flurry of WhatsAppmessages about gangs of child kidnappers in the area, local police chiefRiyaz Iqbal told AFP.
“We are trying to identify the victim and have circulated her picture toall the police stations,” Singrauli police chief Riyaz Iqbal told AFP.
Last Thursday the Indian government threatened WhatsApp with legal action,saying the “medium” for spreading malicious rumours “cannot evaderesponsibility and accountability”.
WhatsApp said the next day it would test limiting the ability of its morethan 225 million Indian users to forward messages and remove the “quickforward button” next to media messages.
It had already announced new features to help users identify messages thathave been forwarded and bought full-page adverts in Indian newspapers withtips on how to spot misinformation.
It has however stopped short of acceding to Indian government demands toenable the authorities to trace messages, saying its service would stay”end-to-end encrypted”.
Lynchings are nothing new in India, but the spread of smartphones to eventhe most remote corners has enabled rumours to be shared at lightning speedand in huge volumes.
The spate of attacks related to rumours of child kidnapping started lastMay in the eastern state of Jharkhand with the emergence of a video thathas since spread across India.
People have also been lynched by Hindu extremists murdering Muslims andthrashing low-caste Dalits accused of killing cows or eating beef. – APP/AFP