Bengaluru: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is posing a major challenge to governments and authorities all across the world. We all can agree that there is a lot of misinformation being spread about the disease and the ways in which the crisis is being handled by various governing bodies which is making their jobs harder.
On July 19, Bengaluru Commissioner of Police Bhaskar Rao had posted a tweet informing about an arrest that was made in connection with “circulating false videos of panic in Victoria Hospital”.
“City Crime Branch swiftly identified and arrested this person who has been circulating false videos of panic in Victoria Hospital, Bangalore. Kudos to all doctors and medical professionals who are doing their best.FALSE NEWS BUSTED,” the CoP wrote and attached a picture of the miscreant.
To this tweet, a Twitter user replied, “But as per news 97% people died in ICU/ventilator in Victoria hospital.”
The Commissioner immediately confronted the user and informed him that the police would “locate” him “to seek more information from your “news source””. “…if found untrue please be ready to face consequences of putting this tweet, if true, the government will take action against concerned,” the top cop added.
He then instructed Sandeep Patil, Joint Commissioner of Police, of the Bengaluru City Police Crime branch, to “please locate this gentleman through your Crime Branch and take further action”, to which the latter obliged.
“Let this serve a msg to those on Social Media not Like, forward, retweet unconfirmed news that cause panic,” he added.
However, some of the other Twitter users were quick to point out to the CoP that the man was quoting a news article published by The Indian Express titled “At top Bengaluru hospital, 97% corona patients on ventilator died”. Some others also pointed out that it wasn’t right for him to threaten someone before making an inquiry or checking his sources.
Many demanded that action, instead, be taken against the media houses that publish the articles.
