Mob lynchings incidents unfortunate, unverified fake news trigger them: Rajnath

In the parliament, Singh said that he condemns all incidents of mob lynching and these incidents are also based on fake news and unverified news.

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NEW DELHI: On the second day of Monsoon session, the issue of Swami Agnivesh assault by a mob in Jharkhand was raised in Rajya Sabha by the opposition. Home Minister Rajnath Singh gave a clarification on such incidents in Lok Sabha. In the parliament, Singh said that he condemns all incidents of mob lynching and these incidents are based on fake news and unverified news. The govt. had issued an advisory on this recently, and one in 2016 also. He also requested the state governments to look into this and also the social media service providers to prevent further spreading of fake news. Mob lynching incidents have gone up over the past few months where people have been killed in the wake of social media posts on alleged child lifters. Taking a note of this, the Supreme Court had earlier said "no citizen can take law into their own hands. In case of fear and anarchy, the state has to act positively. Violence can't be allowed". A surprising comment by Jharkhand's Pakur town, state urban development minister CP Singh came on Swami Agnivesh assault by mob. He had said "I think he sponsored an attack on himself. He is a huge hypocrite. He talks against Hindus, makes anti-national comments, supports Kashmiri separatists and Naxals." Earlier, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had written to WhatsApp to take appropriate measures to curtail the spread of fake news and provocative messages on its platform following a spate of murders in 9 states over the last month connected to fake messages on the social media platform. Acting on this, WhatsApp announced its latest feature globally that will highlight when a message has been forwarded versus composed by the sender. Co-accused of helping to spur violence in countries, Facebook on Wednesday had also said that it will begin removing misinformation that leads to violence and physical harm.