Sushant Singh Rajput death: Mumbai Police registers two FIRs against trolls who tried to discredit the force

At least 80,000 fake social media accounts were created across nine countries as part of the orchestrated campaign, according to a report by Mumbai Police’s cyber unit

A first information report (FIR) has been filed against those who had created fake accounts on social media to troll Param Bir Singh, commissioner, Mumbai Police, and orchestrated a campaign to discredit the police and the Maharashtra government regarding the investigation into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput (34).

Sushant Singh Rajput. (HT Photo)

Rajput was found dead in his Bandra apartment on June 14.

At least 80,000 fake social media accounts were created across nine countries as part of the orchestrated campaign, according to a report by Mumbai Police’s cyber unit.

“The Mumbai Police commissioner is being trolled on various social media platforms and abusive languages are being used against him and the Mumbai Police. An FIR has been filed against social media account holders under section 67 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. Most of these social media accounts are found to be fake and we will be taking action against them,” said Rashmi Karandikar, deputy commissioner of police (DCP) (cyber), Mumbai Police.

“Another FIR has been registered against the culprits who had used a morphed image of the official Twitter account of the Mumbai Police commissioner recently. We have started the probe in both the matters,” added Karandikar.

The internal report, submitted by the unit to Singh, said it found posts were uploaded on social media platforms from different countries, including Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovenia, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand, Romania and France.

“The campaign to demoralise us was orchestrated at a time when 84 Mumbai Police personnel has died due to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic and over 6,000 were found to have been infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease. This was a motivated campaign with vested interests to malign the image of the Mumbai Police and derail our line of investigation,” Singh had said.

Those found violating the law would be prosecuted under relevant sections of the IT Act, 2000, he had said. “Multiple fake accounts on social media were created to target the Mumbai Police in an abusive language,” he had added.

There have been speculations galore about Rajput’s death.

Earlier, Mumbai Police had questioned several members of the film industry before the actor’s family members filed a police complaint in Bihar alleging a conspiracy behind his death and blamed his girlfriend actor Rhea Chakraborty and her family members.

At present, the case is being probed by several central agencies, including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).

Chakraborty, her brother Showik and some other associates are in judicial custody for their alleged involvement in consumption of banned narcotic substances and NCB authorities claimed are related to Rajput’s death.

The cyber unit’s revelation came days after a medical team from New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has ruled out the possibility of murder in Rajput’s death.

The Maharashtra government has claimed that the AIIMS report is a vindication of its stand in the high-profile case.

“We had investigated this case professionally. CBI had set up a panel of AIIMS doctors, who have justified our investigation, the findings of Cooper Hospital and the forensic laboratory. Except for a few people, nobody else was aware of our investigation, but still, many have criticised it,” Singh had said.