A police complaint has been lodged against Swara Bhaskar, Twitter Inc., and others for spreading ‘propaganda to spread hate’ amongst communities through a viral video.
Mumbai Police have registered an FIR against bollywood actor Swara Bhaskar for allegedly igniting religious rioting. Swara is accused of posting fake news on her official Twitter account. After her post, netizens demanded action against her for allegedly posting religious hate. The complaint against her states that Swara has lakhs of followers on her social media handle, so as a celebrity she should be held responsible for her actions as her comment is ‘spreading hatred among citizens’ on social media.
Earlier, Swara Bhaskar had shared a video on Twitter, in which she says that an elderly man is being forced to speak Vande Mataram. For this reason people have cut his beard and beaten him up. In this video, there was also talk of raising religion-specific slogans. After her tweet became trending, her video turned out to be false. Media reports also revealed that there was a dispute regarding the amulet and the people who beat up the elderly also belonged to the same community.
After posting a video she also posted another tweet and wrote, “RW and Sanghi are constantly vomiting on my timeline. Because the Ghaziabad Police has taken the names of 3 people of the same community. The main accused is Parvesh Gujjar. The person who is seen in the camera is putting emphasis on the old man. My god this is a very wrong creation. I am ashamed and you should be too.”
According to the complaint, the users mentions, “Swara Bhaskar willfully shared false information and thereby committed an offence under sections 153, 153A, 295A, 505, 120B and 34 of IPC.” The report also claimed that “despite the clear information available, the above users used the incident to spread communalism and hatred between religions.”
The complainant accused Swara and the others of giving the video a communal angle. “In spite of clear information available, the above cited users used this incident communalise and spread hat(e) amongst the religions. Moreover, Twitter Inc., Twitter Communication India Private Limited and Mr Manish Maheshwari (Managing Director – Twitter India) did not take any action to remove these false tweets knowing the fact that the incident did not have any kind of communal angle,” the document read.
