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Sukanta Chakraborty (33) was at Sabroom, a small town on the Indian border with Bangladesh, known for her beautiful voice. He used them to sing Bengali folk songs, at weddings or simply for his wife, but also for a few months as a broadcaster for the local government. In a van, he drove from village to village to catch up with a microphone to people on political campaigns or new government plans.
On June 28, the day Chakraborty was lynched by an angry mob, he had a very different message. In Sabroom and well beyond, it was like a campfire at that time: there are kidnappers nearby who steal children's loins. Do not panic, Chakraborty had to proclaim his bosses, these messages are false. And then things went wrong.
The singer became the umpteenth victim of a bloody phenomenon that spread throughout India that afternoon. False rumors of kidnapped children, massively shared via Whatsapp and Facebook, have claimed the lives of at least 15 people since May, at least as many were injured. In the federal states Assam Maharashtra Tamil Nadu and Tripura, which includes Sabroom
The ingredients are the same everywhere: smartphones, a disturbing photo or video, scared villagers and a stranger who passed.
200
million WhatsApp users count India, which is more than any other country in the world.
13.7
billion WhatsApp messages are supposed to be sent daily in India
481
million Internet users had India in December 2017 according to the Internet Mobile Association of India. An increase of over 11 percent over the previous year.
20.26
percent was (in December 2017) the Internet penetration in the Indian countryside. In India, where cheap phone subscriptions have made sure that millions of Indians have logged in for the first time online, spreading false news is a problem where the government is hard to compete with. Especially in rural areas where the novelty of something like WhatsApp (with more than 200 million users in India) is the largest and the communities have gathered in many group cats.
Not for the first time fatal consequences. Last year in Jharkhand seven people were lynched because of a message from WhatsApp that continued, also about alleged kidnappers. But what remained then limited to a federal state, now seems to have no more border.
At the Kalachara market are the ruined glass pieces of the white bus in which Chakraborty arrived this afternoon. There is no trace of the screaming crowd, which can be seen in the many movies circulating online. Street dogs are sleeping, store shutters are down. The only sign of life comes from a few dozen paramilitaries who, keeping their backs and poles in their hands, watch.
The announcer, along with the driver and a government engineer, already had some villages when they parked the van on Kalachara Square. It was a market day and crowded with people from all over the region. "At one point, about twenty people came to us, clearly aggressive," says Sri Jayanta Kumar Dey, head of the sound equipment. Their bus, which was new and had no license plate, had aroused suspicion.
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