Hyderabad: The Cyberabad Cybercrime police on Monday booked a retired Major of the Indian Army on charges of posting fake news on microblogging site Twitter, allegedly with malicious intent to spread enmity between two groups.

The retired officer, Major Neelam Singh, had allegedly posted from his Twitter handle a forged news article of a newspaper titled ‘Cyberabad Police bans sale of oranges in the city’ and attached a morphed photo with senior police officers of Cyberabad.

A person from north-India circulates fake news stating Cyberabad police banned sale of oranges in Hyderabad. He used masthead of a city-based English daily to make it look that paper published 'orange sale ban' news. Case is registered. @MARRIRAMU @cpcybd @TelanganaDGP — The Hindu-Hyderabad (@THHyderabad) April 27, 2020

The Cybercrime police said that as the post was likely to promote enmity between different religions and prejudicial to the maintenance of communal harmony, a criminal case was registered against Singh and was being investigated.

“It is further requested that, citizens should not believe such type of fake posts, unless it is confirmed by the authorities concerned,” officials said.

It was posted at 11.12 am on April 26 and was liked by 17.1k users and retweeted by 5,572 before being deleted. The profile of ‘theskindoctor13’ reads thus: “Alter ego of @MajorNeel. Dermatologist. Private Citizen. Na samman ka moh, na apmaan ka bhay.” It has 2,76,000 followers.

Ever since Coronavirus outbreak spread, fake news has been a challenge for the police to monitor surfacing around social media which creates disharmony and disinformation in the society.

India has 451 million monthly active internet users, according to a 2019 report, and 400 million WhatsApp users, making it the company’s largest market. WhatsApp has been one of the key platforms for spreading disinformation in India—to such a degree that the company in 2018 limited how many times a message can be forwarded after a spate of mob killings driven by rumors spread on the platform.

The spread of fake news has long been a concern in India—the rumormongering around COVID-19 is simply following prevailing patterns.