TISS Professors Falsely Linked To Palghar Lynching Want Twitter to Remove Fake News

Hyderabad, TELANGANA: Two professors from Tata Institute of Social Sciences-Mumbai, Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar, have asked Twitter India to take down a series of tweets that falsely accuse them of being linked to the Palghar lynching case in Maharashtra. The tweets are accompanied by an old photograph of the two, and misidentifies them as well.

On April 17, three men were lynched in Palghar district in Maharashtra by a mob that allegedly suspected them of being kidnappers and organ harvesters. More than 100 people have been arrested by the Maharashtra police, and the state government has denied that there is a communal angle to the incident. This, however, has not stopped efforts by the right wing, especially on social media, to communalise the crime.   

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The professors, who are married to each other, told HuffPost India that while Facebook—where the posts linking them to the accused in the case first surfaced on April 25—has blocked one profile and taken down the content, Twitter India has not yet officially initiated action against the users spreading fake news against them.

The photograph being circulated on social media dates back to 2005. In it, they have been wrongly identified as Pradeep Prabhu, a former faculty member of TISS’s Tuljapur campus, and Shiraz Balsara, a social activist. The posts appeared after an April 20 article in Organiser, a publication affiliated to the RSS, said that Balsara, who is associated with the NGO Kashtakari Sanghatana, was “working to arrange bail for those arrested” in connection with the case. 

Monteiro and Jayasanker said that they had not posted any content “mentioning the Palghar case specifically” on their social media accounts which could be mistook as support for the accused. The couple said that they have been spending a lot of time on the issue and that tackling misinformation has stressed them out. 

“This is a busy time in TISS because we are doing academic work virtually and also coordinating the Covid-19 relief effort. We were forced to waste a lot of time and energy on this subject,” said Monteiro. The comments on posts and tweets have been “vicious and violent”, they pointed out, adding that this was what had shaken them the most. Though their photograph is being shared widely online, the couple have not received any threats over the phone, they said.  However, the incident has caused them “mental anguish”, they added. 

TISS alumni, faculty members and friends of Monteiro and Jayasankar have been reporting the fake content on both Facebook and Twitter. Within hours of the post appearing on Facebook, it was shared hundreds of times, said Monteiro. However, even after Facebook took down the original post, several users have been sharing its screen grabs to replicate the same content, added Jayasanker. 

Meanwhile, on Twitter, though Monteiro and Jayasanker have been writing to individual users appraising them of the false content, the effort has not yet curbed retweets, they said.

The couple said that they hoped “Twitter would be more proactive in stopping fake news”. 

“Taking down fake news is not censorship. It is about making safe spaces for people on social media,” Monteiro said. “It should not be confused with freedom of expression because fake news violates several laws of the land,” Jayasanker said. 

Social media companies should be held responsible for fake news spreading on their platforms as per India’s IT act, the couple stressed.   

Monteiro is the Dean of Media and Cultural Studies, TISS-Mumbai, and has a Masters degree in economics and PhD in Sociology. Jayasanker is a TISS professor and chair of the Centre for Critical Media Praxis at the School of Media and Cultural Studies. The duo, who are also internationally acclaimed filmmakers, have won 32 national and international awards at documentary festivals.   

The couple said that the photograph which is now under circulation had originally appeared on several blogs which showcase their films. “It is a fairly old photograph and we ourselves have used it on several film blogs,” Monteiro said. 

The couple said that they are fairly acquainted with Prabhu, who was a former colleague of theirs. 

Meanwhile, some users on social media platforms have also been linking Pradeep Prabhu with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, a claim which has not been substantiated yet. An activist and friend of Prabhu and Balsara told HuffPost India that they too have not been in touch with the accused in the case. 

Jayasanker sympathises with Prabhu and Balsara, who “are more affected by this because their names were taken in the posts. The anger was directed at them even though the photograph was ours. The overwhelming support from friends, students and alumni on social media has made a difference in our case”.

 The couple said that they are unsure of how the “situation will pan out” for all four of them. It is ironic that they are being targeted by fake news in connection with Palghar lynching, which itself is believed to have been instigated by fake news, Monteiro added.