WhatsApp is introducing new features to curb the spread of rumours, fake messages and doctored videos within its platform, after a fierce demand by the Indian government this week.

"The use, abuse, (and) misuse of your platform, particularly, which leads to killing of innocent people is plainly not acceptable," India's Minister of Electronics and IT told WhatsApp on Wednesday.

At least 18 people have been killed this year in separate incidents when false information shared through the app fuelled violent mobs to attack innocent people. Most of the rumours warn of child abductors.

A protestor at a June 11 demonstration in Gauhati, India, wears a badge showing Nilotpal Das, right and Abhijit Nath, who were killed by mobs inflamed by fraudulent social media reports of kidnappers preying on children. (Anupam Nath/Associated Press)

Mass protests have followed, yet the vigilante-style attacks have continued.

Beggars suspected of child abduction

On Friday, three men at a railway station in the northeastern district of Assam were rescued by the army from a possible lynching. They were surrounded by hundreds mistaking them for possible child abductors.

According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the men were begging for alms and at one point, appeared to have been speaking to a child. The Times spoke to an officer from nearby Pimpalner village, charged with the investigation.

Regions in India where some of the attacks have taken place. (CBC)

"Although there was no child kidnapping case recorded with Pimpalner police, there was a rumour in the village and its surrounding areas about an active child kidnapping gang," he said. "This is a tribal area, and any stranger or outsider is viewed with suspicion."

Early last week, five men were beaten to death on similar suspicions in Dhule district of Maharashtra, a western state.

Family members grieve by a portrait of Bala Krishna outside his house in Korremula, India. The 33-year-old motorized rickshaw driver was killed by a mob inflamed by social media. (Mahesh Kumar A./Associated Press)

Hundreds from around the local village joined in, first beating the men with stones and sticks, some filming it on their cellphones, before taking them into a confined room and brutally assaulting them. At least 24 people have been arrested in connection to the attack.

Tracing the origin of child abduction rumours

In India, with more than 200 million WhatsApp users, the service has become a primary source of news and information.

But distorted information spreads fast, as was the case with a particular public service video about child kidnapping that originated from Pakistan. The video, styled like CCTV footage, shows two men pull up on a motorcycle in front of a group of children. They snatch a child and drive away. They come back, then hold up a sign that warns parents just how quickly a child could be kidnapped.

In another lynching in Assam in early June, two men stopping to ask for directions were assumed to be the child kidnappers from the video. A doctored version of that video, cropped to end right after the child was snatched and the men ride away, made it seem like footage of an actual incident. They were lynched by an angry mob.