Agnipath protest: 35 WhatsApp groups banned for spreading fake news, 10 held
Agnipath protests: At least ten people have been arrested on charges of rumour-mongering and organising protests.The Centre has also issued a number 8799711259 for WhatsApp fact-checking, the home ministry said.
The Centre on Sunday banned 35 WhatsApp groups for spreading fake news on Agnipath scheme and Agniveers, the ministry of home affairs said. At least ten people have been arrested on charges of rumour-mongering and organising protests.
The Centre has also issued a number 8799711259 for WhatsApp fact-checking, the home ministry said. The crackdown comes amid reports of social media platforms particularly WhatsApp being used for mobilising protests in states like Bihar which has witnessed incidents of train bogies being torched.
On June 17, the Bihar government while suspending internet services in 12 districts till Sunday had said that internet was being used to transmit objectionable content in order to spread rumours with an intent to incite public and cause damage to life and property.
Protestors carrying sticks run at a railway station during a protest against the Agnipath scheme in Patna, Bihar. (Reuters)
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The district administration in Patna also said that the information collected from the mobile phones of arrested protesters pointed to the role of coaching centres.
The Telangana Police arrested the owner of a coaching institute in Narasaraopet town of Palnadu district in Andhra Pradesh for allegedly instigating the youth to participate in the protests against the Agnipath scheme. The detained coaching institute owner Avula Subba Rao is accused of having created a WhatsApp group called Hakimpet Army Soldiers which comprised hundreds of army aspirants. On this group, he had allegedly sent messages to all the members asking them to take part in the protests.
Amid the protests, the Centre has made it clear that there will be no rollback of the Agnipath scheme for recruitments to the armed forces for a four-year tenure. On the issue of vandalism and arson, the defence ministry said that those accused in violent protests will not be recruited. The aspirants will have to submit a written pledge stating they didn't take part in the protests. The pledge will be verified by the police.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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