A day after an FIR was lodged in connection with a Clubhouse chat room, where purported derogatory remarks were made against Muslim women, preliminary investigation has revealed that all the suspects were operating fake accounts, said the police.
Efforts are under way to trace the locations of the chat room members and make arrests, the police said. A senior police officer, privy to the probe, said they have written to Clubhouse and Google, asking for information about the application and the chat rooms operating through it.
“We have written to Clubhouse, seeking information about the origin of the chat room in question and who were its organisers… we have also written to Google asking as to how they allowed the application to operate on their Play Store,” the officer said.
Police sources said they have zeroed in on five to six suspects who were part of the chat room. Most of them belong to States neighbouring Delhi. “The suspects include both men and women and all of them are adults,” the source added.
Officers said most of the chat room members had modulated their voice and edited it in order to erase any digital footprint. “It is difficult to identify their exact locations as most of them used dubbed voices,” the source said.
“Even if we don’t receive a response from Clubhouse and Google, once we trace all the identified suspects through digital backtracking, we will start making arrests,” an officer said.
In the chat room, which hosted around 20 persons, members could be heard purportedly making lewd and derogatory remarks against Muslim women.
Another video
On Wednesday, a video recording of another Clubhouse chat room by the name of “Girls don’t have privilege to marry upper caste boys” was posted online, where members can purportedly be heard making lewd remarks against women. Officials said some members were common in both chat rooms.
“Clubhouse is a place for people around the world to spend time with friends, engage in discussion and learn. There is absolutely no place for hate or abuse on the platform. We invest significantly in keeping our community safe and take swift action at any violation of our policies,” a Clubhouse spokesperson said.