Anatomy of three riot-like situations Premium

The challenge is to identify potentially provocative content before it goes viral

After the Delhi Assembly election results were announced, a social media post showing Opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, and Arvind Kejriwal being scantily clad, with Arabic verses written on their bodies, sparked tensions in Udayagiri, a locality with a significant Muslim population in Mysuru, on the night of February 10.

A large crowd gathered in front of Udayagiri police station demanding action against the man who had put up the post. Though the police arrested him, there were rumours that he was being released on bail. A local Maulvi reportedly addressed the crowd with a provocative speech, which allegedly incited violence. The crowd threw stones at the police, injuring 14 personnel.

This is the third riot-like situation that has been created in Karnataka over the last five years. The earlier incidents occurred in D.J. Halli in Bengaluru in August 2020 and Hubballi in April 2022. Each time, the script has been the same.

In the earlier cases too, large crowds of Muslims gathered outside police stations to lodge complaints against provocative social media posts against Islam. Even as the police arrested those responsible for the posts, the anger of the mob did not subside and eventually turned against the police. In D.J. Halli, the police opened fire, killing four.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which was in power in the State during the first two disturbances, invoked the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, and handed over the probe to the National Investigation Agency amidst opposition to invoking the UAPA as “unwarranted”. In the Udayagiri case, the police have booked rioting cases against vandals.

The police in Karnataka seem to be struggling with how multiple elements — extreme communal polarisation, hate speeches, and organised provocative content on social media — feed each other in a vicious cycle online and in the real world. In an attempt to address this problem, the police have begun social media monitoring cells at the district level. Police have filed numerous suo motu cases whenever they come across such “inflammatory and derogatory” content.

However, the challenge is to identify such potentially provocative content before it goes viral and leads to law-and-order situations. The limited software that the district cells have is not compatible with regional languages, does not read what is written on images (as was the problem in the Udayagiri case), and scans only posts but not the comments section of these posts.