After noticing that a lot of WhatsApp forwards that are sent out in groups or individual chats may be the reason for the spread of misinformation, hate, violence, and offense. Police have taken some strict measures to counter these messages, the admin of group will be arrested if any member of the group shares any offensive message.
Junaid Khan, a 21-year-old BSc student from Rajgarh, Madhya Pradesh, has been in jail since the past five months for an “objectionable” message that was sent on a group in which he was initially just a member and eventually became an admin, his family argues. He was arrested on February 14 this year and booked under the IT Act and IPC Section 124 A (sedition). His only fault was being the administrator of that WhatsApp group.
There’s a natural process in WhatsApp that if an administrator leaves the group then WhatsApp automatically makes anyone from the group the new administrator by default. It was then that the admin (Irfan) left the group and another member (Junaid) became an admin by default.
Initially, he was part of a WhatsApp group in which the admin was Irfan. He had posted an objectionable forward and left from the group, which made Junaid group administrator by default. Police say when they received the complaint, Junaid was the administrator at that point of time.
Since then he has been in jail, its been 5 months now and his family members say that he was not even allowed to write exams. “We approached senior police officers and complained with the CM Helpline but no one is coming to our rescue. No one listened to us that he was not the admin when the message was posted”, Farukh, his brother said.
SIASAT NEWS