Circulating through social media and blared out on television, obnoxious, mischievous and baseless messages warning of terror arrests and threats to the city sent the city police into a tizzy, on Tuesday.
Officers in the police control room said they had been receiving calls from “anxious” citizens who turned to the men in Khaki after seeing television news channels discussing terror threats.
“We are disbursing information through social media and press releases to counter the spread of these rumours. There is absolutely no reason to fear. There is no reason to be worried about terrorist attacks and we have repeated this to television channels too,” said M.N. Reddi, Police Commissioner, and sought to assure the public that “all precautions” were being taken to verify the sources of the rumours
In a press release, he even implored the “print and electronic media” to “prominently” carry his message – ïn the interest of peace and public order – dismissing the rumours and terror threats.
This was done as a desperate effort after some regional Television news channels carried “erroneous” reports of arrests and terror threats to the city. They had also constantly telecast a tweet from a parody twitter account @ISIS_med which warned of a threat to the city.
The rumours were compounded by messages on social networking apps like Whatsapp. One message read “Public places, colleges, schools…crowded markets…big technology firms will be targeted.”
Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Alok Kumar took to the social networking site to counter rumours. He urged the public in his tweet to disregard “rumours” and “misleading tweets”. “Bengaluru City Police is always prepared to firmly deal with rumour and mischief mongers,” he said.
Furthermore, he said the police were conducting a “security audit”, which included checking measures at Bangalore City Station, Kempegowda Bus Stand and even major markets, restaurants, cafés and pubs in Central Bengaluru.
It must be recalled that in October 2012, the spread of fallacious details – through messages – of attacks on persons from the North East in the city had led to panic and migration of the community.
Commissioner of Police M.N. Reddi posted: “Appeal: public not to pay heed to any of the so called threatening tweets reg safety of Bengaluru city…There is absolutely no threat perception. However we will thoroughly verify the source of these claims. All precautions are taken.”
All r requestd 2 RT my tweets issued now that Bngaluru is secure &that ther is no teror or any other thret to city & also pl circulte on SM
— M N Reddi, IPS (@CPBlr) >December 16, 2014
