Bengaluru Police took to Twitter on Tuesday to quash a viral social media posts claiming a preschool student was abducted by a bike borne assailant in the city's Nagarbhavi area.
This is the second instance in a span of a few days where Bengaluru police have admitted to seeing a spike in child kidnapping related rumors online.
Some people are spreading rumours regarding child kidnapping . Members of public are requested to cross check the veracity of such messages before circulating it. Rumour mongers will be punished as per the provisions of law.
BOOM recently debunked child kidnapping rumours that had spread in Madhya Pradesh with a host of old and unrelated videos and images. (Read more) Hoax child kidnapping rumours spread online have had brutal real world consequences in India with several innocent people getting lynched in separate incidents between 2017 and 2018.
Bengaluru police warned that strict action would be taken against those sharing false messages on social media.
BOOM searched with the caption of the latest misleading message and found several posts on Facebook sharing the image with the same text:
"Kidnapped just 25 minutes back from nagarbhavi by bike person wearing black shirt n helmet.pl pass message through all ur contacts... (sic)"
The misleading message includes a photograph of a little girl wearing the uniform of a playschool located in Nagarbhavi. The school was not immediately reachable for a comment.