Man held in Tripura for posting communal content on Facebook using fake female account

A 41-year-old man was arrested in Tripura on Tuesday for posting communal and provocative content on social media using a fake female profile, an official said.

A police official said that the Cyber Crime Unit of Tripura Police Crime Branch (TPCB) on Tuesday arrested Sudip Debbarma (41) for posting communal and provocative content on Facebook aimed at disturbing public peace and harmony. The TPCB earlier registered a case on October 22 under various sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, against one Rinki Debbarma, who runs a Facebook profile under this name.

Police traced the origin of the Facebook account and identified Sudip Debbarma, the person behind the fake profile, and it revealed that a male person impersonating as a female used to run this account. After due verification, Debbarma, a resident of Kalyanpur in Khowai district, was arrested on Tuesday by the Cyber Crime Unit of TPCB.

Later, he was produced before a local court, which remanded him to five days' police custody.

Meanwhile, earlier on October 26, an Agartala-based woman digital content creator was arrested on the charge of spreading obscenity through social media against many important personalities.

A police official said that after the arrest of digital content creator Madhabi Biswas, she was produced at the Chief Judicial Magistrate's court, and the court initially remanded her to three-day police custody, and now she is in judicial custody. Biswas, of late, became a regular content creator on her Facebook channel with her own style of slamming Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha, former Chief Minister and BJP's Lok Sabha member Biplab Kumar Deb and Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) Mayor and BJP MLA Dipak Majumder on diverse issues.

Several AMC corporators and BJP leaders filed more than a dozen complaints against Biswas in different police stations in Agartala. West Agartala police station's officer-in-charge Rana Chatterjee had said: “Biswas was accused of spreading obscenity through social media platforms. A case under various provisions of IT and BNS (Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023) has been lodged against her.”

Opposition CPI(M) and the Congress leaders, as well as Tripura Human Rights Organisation, an NGO fighting for rights, condemned the arrest of the digital content creator Biswas.

“For several days, the police had been putting pressure on her to stop criticising the state government on social media, but she continued to do so. That's why she has been arrested. We demand her unconditional release. She was arrested by the police to tell the other people not to criticise the government,” senior advocate and President of the right body Purushottam Ray Barman had said.