Close on the heels of issuing a request seeking the public to desist from sharing videos inciting regional hatred, the Kerala police have commenced attempts to trace the accounts which began circulating the hateful content.
Officials said the police had noticed deliberate attempt by a section of ill-motivated people to use a particular incident for dividing people on a regional basis.
“A clear pattern of this trend is yet to emerge but we have identified involvement of people from different locations and various social groups in the campaign,” said Manoj Abraham, Inspector General of Police and nodal officer of the Kerala police Cyber Dome.
The agency, meanwhile, is yet to take a decision on registering cases against these campaigners as it is yet to know the exact motive behind the sharing of these videos.
A detailed probe is on to ascertain the same.
Police officials point out the incident to be yet another example of social media becoming a cesspool of offensive language and breeding grounds for extreme and harmful concepts.
“Social media is changing the way hate crimes take place as the predators are reaching out to the victims directly. The most vitriolic among these target on their identity, race, religion or even sexuality, to make the campaign as hurtful and personalised as possible,” explained another officer.
The other day, Kerala police came out against the circulation of the videos featuring a Tamil man and a Keralite woman exchanging abuses.
In a Facebook post on its official page, the agency clarified that those videos were part of a private spat.
“The videos made by a Tamil man and a Keralite woman as part of a personal dispute are now being circulated widely in the social media. These posts, unfortunately, has been taken up by a section of people, who, in turn, attempt to turn this into a row between Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Such attempts are uncultured and despicable,” noted the message.
It further requested the educated and cultured youths of both Tamil Nadu and Kerala to behave with mutual respect and act carefully in such cases.
The war of words, which started a few days ago with the posting of the two videos, poured in to different social media platforms with youngsters from both sides jumping into the fray.