In the wake of raging politics over the Antarvedi fire incident in which a 60-year-old temple chariot was gutted last week, Andhra Pradesh DGP Gautam Sawang said that all places of worship in the state will be geo-tagged in a bid to tighten surveillance.
“Geo-tagging will bring in more accountability and efficiency, control rooms will be always be on alert and the response will be quick,” Sawang told News18.
Besides geo-mapping, tightened CCTV monitoring and safety audit of religious places, the state police chief said that many social media handles have come under the scanner for allegedly spewing hatred and disrupting communal harmony.
Calling the Antarvedi incident “unfortunate and a grey area”, Sawang said several people in the cyberspace are violating norms by putting up offensive posts.
“We are in the process of profiling hundreds of cyberbullies who are misusing social media platforms to fan hatred and communal unrest. These accounts have been marked to our unit officers who are keeping a close tab on them. We will take strict action against such individuals and book them under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including Section 153A,”
While the cybercrime wing of the Andhra Pradesh Police has been working round-the-clock to clamp down on social media accounts propagating hate, the state police has also mobilised several peace committees at the grassroots-level to dispel rumours, misinformation and raise awareness.
As far as the investigations are concerned, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy has appealed to the Centre to give nod for a CBI probe even as his government continues to face allegations of being ‘anti-Hindu’ from the Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party, the BJP and its ally Jana Sena Party belonging to actor-turned-politician Pawan Kalyan.
Elaborating on why the state government has sought a CBI probe into the incident, Sawang said the Reddy government took a quick decision based on its own understanding of the situation.
“A lot of apprehensions are being articulated, there seems to an all-round effort to attribute certain things behind the incident. Therefore, we arrived at the decision of handing over the investigation to a neutral agency so that misleading facts fizzle out and only truth prevails. We are being more pre-emptive than the other side,” he added.
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