MUMBAI: The Maharashtra cyber police teams since lockdown have registered 218 cases of fake news and hate speeches being shared on social media.While more than 1.5 lakh police personnel in the state are on the streets to implement strict lockdown and maintain law and order, four teams of Maharashtra Cyber are round-the-clock busy in filtering and identifying fake posts and hate speeches on social media which create panic and cause enmity between two communities in the state. The teams are busy connecting to the social media platforms like TikTok, WhatsApp Twitter requesting them to pull out the posts.“Our teams are busy in filtering the fake and hate news messages and videos with key words and we segregate them at our level. Later, the concerned local police are informed about the sensitive posts and criminal cases are registered. So far we have arrested 45 persons and identified 160 others,” said Dr Balsingh Rajput, superintendent of police, Maharashtra Cyber.The four teams of the cyber department - monitoring desk, intelligence, coordination committee and awareness team - though find it difficult to scan thousands of posts daily from various social media platforms but are rigorously busy fighting the hate speeches and fake news.The state cyber lab personnel are engaged in scanning the social media platforms, checking and alerting the intelligence unit and coordination committee to take action. There is a rising trend in hate speech cases in the last few days. “The number of hate speeches posted over the social media and where police registered cases has gone up to 115,” added Rajput. The other major category is rumors/ fake news about coronavirus with 75 cases and 24 cases are regarding posts about misinformation.Police have also issued notices to post senders to take down their posts as well. “So far 32 posts have been removed,” said Rajput.Among the total offensive posts, 102 cases are only from WhatsApp users and due to the nature of technology and encryption posts were deleted. Other posts that attracted penal code sections are, Facebook 71 and TikTok three cases while only three cases are registered against posts on Twitter. Other fake news and rumor cases are 69. Police have issued notices to the platforms to remove 85 posts which are under investigation.Besides that, in 104 cases of hate speeches a total of 114 perpetrators have been identified.Cyber Police are taking efforts to reach common citizens to sensitize about fake news, rumors and hate speech through social media handles of each district.