04 November,2020 08:00 AM IST | Mumbai | A correspondent
Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh
The Mumbai police on Tuesday said that Twitter accounts operated from foreign countries, some of them run by "bots", were used to spread slanderous posts against the Maharashtra government and Mumbai police after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
A team of cyber and forensic experts submitted the report to the Mumbai Police. The report was generated using Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning for the analysis of Twitter hashtags and related accounts, which were created or surfaced recently (June 2020- October 2020).
Many of the Twitter accounts which spread false or defamatory messages about Sushant's suicide and its probe were found to be run by "bots" (software programs designed to tweet and retweet content), as per a cyber experts' report.
"Mumbai police cyber cell has found that there were more than 1.5 lakh accounts which were posting derogatory comments/posts on social media against Mumbai police, Mumbai police commissioner and Maharashtra government regarding Sushant Singh Rajput case. As per the cyber cell department, so far they have identified 1,000 bots which are related to these accounts," said the police.
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The police further said that as per the cyber cell, 80 per cent of these accounts were related to these 1,000 bots.
These accounts were being run from outside India, from places such as China, Panama, Hong Kong, Nepal, the report said. Some accounts which were being operated from within India were using proxy servers to hide the user's identity, the report added.
After Sushant's death, many new Twitter accounts surfaced and started sending out posts with "negative sentiments" against the Government of Maharashtra, Mumbai Police and even started maligning the Mumbai police commissioner (Param Bir Singh), the report further said.
Different hashtags were used for this and some fake accounts of known Bollywood actors were used to "execute the defamation over social media platform", the report added.
The police said this shows that it was a paid activity. Now many of these accounts have been deleted, or negative posts are being removed to evade investigators' scanner, the police said.
Earlier, the cyber cell had identified 80,000 accounts, now the number has gone beyond 1.5 lakh accounts. Mumbai Police's Cyber Cell will investigate the matter further.
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