NE exdous: More pages blocked, India raises fake videos with Pak

A day after some of the morphed online images and hate messages against people of the Northeast were reportedly traced to Pakistan, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde took up the issue on Sunday with Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik, seeking Islamabad's cooperation in controlling further spread of such offensive content.

Shinde raised the matter when Malik called him up on Sunday morning to congratulate him on taking over as home minister. Shinde told Malik that the fake images and messages had spread rumours and created panic among people of the Northeast and forced hundreds to flee urban centres such as Hyderabad, Bangalore and Mumbai for their home states, fearing attacks after Ramzan.

The government also blocked an additional 80 web pages for circulating offensive material. On Saturday, 76 web pages had been blocked for the same reasons. Home Secretary R K Singh had said a bulk of the images and videos, mostly doctored or taken from events unrelated to the violence in Assam, on these web pages had been uploaded from Pakistan.

A Home Ministry report hinted at the involvement of Pakistan-based terror outfit Jamat-e-Islami. It has identified a video posted on YouTube on July 13 showing a protest march against the alleged mass killings of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. A banner of Jamat-e-Islami is seen clearly in the video. Thereafter, pictures from situations as diverse as an earthquake in Tibet to Thailand had been picked up and mischievously circulated as proof of violence against the Muslim community. None of the images in fact pertains to the recent violence in Assam.

Sources said an arrest is likely in Mumbai, where the main culprit was reportedly circulating the fraudulent images. Some other users have been identified in Delhi and Agra. An Indian based in Kenya was reportedly also involved.

However, according to sources, law enforcement agencies are finding it extremely difficult to obtain adequate information from Internet companies and social networking websites to go after the culptrits. Most of the offensive content is being circulated through YouTube and blogspot, both owned by Google, and Facebook and Twitter.

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