80,000 fake accounts created to defame Mumbai Police and spread fake news on Sushant Singh Rajput’s death: Police Officer

Sushant Singh Rajput’s death investigation has been under a constant flux since the CBI took over the investigation. The late actor has found support from his fans as many campaigns were initiated by online support groups. 

While many raised their voices demanding justice for Sushant, the issue even took a political turn and that led to discredit Mumbai Police and the Maharashtra government. 

Now in a recent turn of events, Mumbai Police has identified over 80,000 fake accounts that were created in the last few months which has led to demoralizing the MP force and spreading misinformation on actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death by suicide.

According to a recent Hindustan Times report around 80,000 fake accounts were created, but police said the probe is on to identify how big this “malicious campaign” has been.

These fake accounts reportedly function from different parts of the world. The Mumbai Police's cyber cell is probing these accounts which operated from countries like Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovenia, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand, Romania, and France.

Speaking about the same, an officer said, “The number could be 8,000 or 80,000. At present it is difficult to say the exact number of fake accounts which have been used to post, using proxy servers to show they were being posted from abroad.”

The Hindustan Times report also quoted a senior IPS officer who said, “We identified the posts in foreign languages because of the hashtags used like #justiceforsushant #sushantsinghrajput and #SSR. We’re in the process of verifying more accounts."

"The campaign was run against Mumbai police just to demoralize us at a time when 84 policemen had died due to the pandemic and over 6,000 men were infected with the virus. This was a motivated campaign with vested interest just to malign the image of Mumbai police and derail our line of investigation. Multiple fake accounts on social media were created to target Mumbai police with abusive tones. Our cyber cell is conducting a thorough investigation into this matter and all those found violating the law will be prosecuted under relevant sections of the Information Technology Act," added the senior IPS officer.

Meanwhile, another report quoted Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh who said several fake accounts have already been identified and action will be initiated soon. “The fake accounts will be in thousands, and we are collecting details,” Singh said.