KARACHI – Social media has played a major role in deciding the future of democracies, but it seems you simply can’t trust anything on the internet.
Police in Sindh issued a statement on Saturday about a video being circulated on social media, which shows that women are being snatched and raped by affluent people “in Sindh’s Umerkot district”.
But this is fake news. The incident, according to SSP Umerkot Usman Ijaz Bajwa, took place in India’s Rajasthan state in September 2017.
The propaganda to portray the human rights situation in negative light had earlier targeted Pakistan’s Tharparkar district when captions were used to assert the incident had happened in that district.
The video has now resurfaced, claiming that the human rights violation shown in the video happened in Umerkot district of Sindh with social media users requesting viewers to spread the video to ‘expose the local police’ and ‘support the poor and meek.’
According to a statement released by the Umerkot SSP, Indian media outlet Zee News had reported the incident and a case was then registered with the Rajasthan police.
The booming business of fake news is not only misguiding millions of people but also eroding credibility of social media in the eyes of public.
