According to the data, of the 1.5 billion monthly active users on WhatsApp, 200 million users are from India. Such is the massive usage of the messaging application in our country. Besides the constant connection and too many forwards, the app in the recent times has been used to circulate fake news.

While a few are harmless, others create panic attacks and create a rift between the communities. The adverse effects of such news have had at least six people die in the month of May and June due to the WhatsApp-related mob attacks in Assam, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu.

IPS Officer Rema Rajeshwari decided to go back to basics and deal with the increasing lack of awareness. Rema, the Superintendent of Police of Jogulamba Gadwal district in Telangana, started a campaign to educate people about the circulation of fake news.

She realises how with the availability of cheap smartphones and internet, accessibility has been easier for everyone. However, the lack of knowledge and awareness make people believe everything that comes on social media.

Therefore, the Jogulamba Gadwal police decided to take up the task of carrying out an awareness campaign against fake news through the Community Outreach Policing method, supervised by the Superintendent.

“As part of the campaign, our officials interacted with the locals and gave them information about the kind of measures that are being taken to prevent crimes. The police officers also told the people how to verify and fact-check messages,” the SP explained to The News Minute (TNM).

She added, “Through our interactions with the locals, we found out that people are being carried away by visuals and photographs rather than text – since many cannot read.”

Rema Rajeshwari addresses villagers at a public awareness programme for fake news via social media apps in Balgera village, Telangana.

In one of the incidents, two women folk singers from Pebberu were attacked in Gattu mandal, in the district, on the suspicion that they were members of a gang that had been kidnapping children from the area. The suspicion that started from a forward on the messaging app.

The plan of action was built when Jogulamba Gadwal district police found their phones flooded with several gory and explicit visuals, with messages that claimed that the notorious Parthi gang was in the district kidnapping children.

The after-effects of the campaign show that the idea is working. Rema tells TNM, “Earlier, people used to panic and be afraid to step out of their homes, but following our outreach drive to curb fake news, they are happy and appreciating us saying ‘no one explained it to us in this way’.”

Hoping that the move will develop awareness among people to counter fake news, the senior police officer said, “The task is big, but we hope it will definitely succeed, like our other community outreach programmes.”

The example of the positive results of the campaign is the case of Yadaiah Jetti, a 22-year-old shepherd. He was terrified when he received a WhatsApp message with a photograph labeling him a child kidnapper who should be killed. “When I saw it on my mobile, I felt so afraid,” he tells Hindustan Times (HT).

The message quickly spread across group chats in his village of Manajipet, nestled among the rocky hills of India’s Deccan plateau. But Rajeshwari’s campaign had already penetrated the remote settlement. He approached an officer assigned to liaise with the village and a local minor was charged.

“I feel safe here now,” Jetti says as night closes in on his village. “But I still won’t travel.”

Rajeshwari had ordered training sessions for more than 500 officers before setting them off on the campaign. She also spoke to hundreds of village leaders. They deployed drummers to sing about fake news before her team began their work. She told HT, “We told the villagers – see, look at the people who are in these videos, they don’t even look like Indians,” she said. “Some of the videos are from South America, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar.”

Local leaders have added her officers into local WhatsApp groups, where the police could monitor messages flowing across the encrypted service.

IPS Rema Rajeshwari was the first female Indian Police Service officer from Munnar and a topper of the Indian Police Service class of 2009. She was posted as the Superintendent of Police in the Jogulamba Gadwal district in March.

Image source