India saw 882 cases of fake news being registered in 2021, according to data released by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), a body under the Ministry of Home Affairs, show.
These 882 cases of fake news and rumours impacted 892 victims, according to the data.
Telangana reported the highest number of these cases, at 218, followed by Tamil Nadu at 137 and Madhya Pradesh at 129.
The crime rate of fake news pan-India however, remains negligible, at 0.1. This is also the case with all states individually, where the crime rate ranges from 0 to 0.6, except for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands where the crime rate is 2.9. However, its population is low, and it reported just two cases. The crime rate is calculated by the NCRB as the crimes committed per lakh of population in that region (pan-India or state/union territory level).
The NCRB defines fake news as a crime committed under section 505 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which deals with rumour-mongering, or if this section is read with the IT Act. Four juveniles - three in Telangana and one in Maharashtra - were also booked under this classification.
This data was shared by the NCRB as part of their flagship 'Crime In India' publication pertaining to the year 2021, released earlier this week.
Further, 115 cases of fake news and rumours were reported from 19 major cities in India, with Hyderabad reporting nearly three-quarters of them at 84. This was followed by 11 in Chennai, 5 in Bangalore, 4 each in Ahmedabad and Mumbai, and one each in Pune, Surat, Indore and Ghaziabad.
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How did the courts and police act on fake news on social media?
These 882 cases adds to an existing caseload of 1005 cases pertaining to fake news, the data show.
The police submitted 221 final reports on cases related to the spread of fake news, while formally submitted 632 chargesheets.
1,029 cases remained to be disposed off at the end of 2021, with a pendency rate of 54.6% in the police system. (showing the pending cases as a ratio of the overall cases for investigation).
With respect to the number of these cases that actually reached the courts, the data show that 49 persons were freshly convicted on account of these provisions, while 63 were acquitted
All in all, the courts had 1,714 cases for trial - 632 new cases added in 2021 with the remaining 1,082 cases being carried forward from previous years.
There were 113 cases that finished trial, bringing the conviction rate of cases registered under fake news to 43.4% (49 convictions by 113 cases that finished trial). At the end of the year, a pendency rate of 90.5 also remained in the court system.
The NCRB report can be read here.