Mumbai: Fake messages about abduction of children keep police on tenterhooks

Fake and unverified messages with wild claims about abduction of children have kept the city police on tenterhooks for the past week as they are being bombarded with queries from anxious parents Joint Commissioner of Police law and order Vishwas Nangre Patil has appealed to citizens not to fall for such messages floating on WhatsApp or social media and asked all zonal DCPs to deal strictly with those spreading rumoursldquoFake abduction messages have been going viral across the city and almost every police station has received complaints but there is no truth to them Itrsquos a rumour no such gangs are active in the city We have been keeping a close tab on this and I have instructed every zonal DCP to hold meetings with locals and ensure that it doesnrsquot spread furtherrdquo Patil told middayAlso read Mumbai Man rescues kidnapped daughter from Uttar Pradesh villageCops said rumours began spreading in the city after four sadhus were recently assaulted in Sangli district on the suspicion of being child lifters ldquoWe are investigating how rumours spread in Mumbai and from where messages that 4050 child abductors are roaming in the city are being sharedrdquo said PatilLast week a Kurla residential society sparked a scare after it issued an internal circular on September 15 that two children had been missing from the premises ldquoWe have recorded the statement of the building manager who said that he had just read about it on social media and issued a circular to alert the residentsrdquo said Rajiv Chavan senior inspector of Vinoba Bhave Nagar police stationldquoI urge citizens not to believe in rumours Before circulating such messages verify with your local police station There is no such gang active in Mumbairdquo added PatilOver the past seven days similar fake messages have created panic across the cityMalad in tizzy over audio clipAn audio clip claiming that three kids from Kala Vidyalaya were kidnapped in a van at Malwani gate number 8 in Malad recently went viral on social media It was claimed that the voice in the clip alerting the public was of a teacher from the schoolIn no time locals caught hold of a woman roaming in the area and thrashed her accusing her of being the kidnapper However when the local police checked all CCTV camera footage of the area they found that no child had been kidnapped They said the woman was a beggar Someone had clicked her photo and shared it fuelling the rumourChildrsquos story rattles AndheriAfter a 10yearold boy from Andheri rushed home and told his parents that someone had tried to kidnap him his worried father wrote a message to alert others ldquoMy child was out of the house during which a man followed him and he tried to kidnap him My child bit his hand and managed to escape Be awarerdquo This gained traction on social media worrying parentsSenior Inspector Santaji Ghorpade of Andheri police station said ldquoNo such incident ever happened We checked all the possible CCTV cameras in the area and found that nobody tried to kidnap the boy Also nobody was following him We requested people not to believe in such rumoursrdquoFake shakes VasaiA few days ago a man was beaten up after he allegedly tried to molest a girl at Vasai Someone had apparently clicked a photo of him and shared it with others with the message that he was a child lifter The message was further twisted on social mediamdashhe was caught kidnapping a child and was thrashed by people However an investigation by the police showed that the messages were fakeParents kids scaredRaging rumours across the city have left parents as well as children spooked ldquoOver the past few days we have received many WhatsApp messages saying that a child was kidnapped at Borivli Kurla Chembur and Vasai and that childkidnapping gangs were at large in the city We were terrified and told our fiveyearold son about this Now he is also scared He wakes up at night fearing that someone is trying to kidnap him We took him to a doctor for counsellingrdquo said a parentAnother parent said he had asked his sevenyearold daughter not to let go of his hand in publicldquoWe also showed her photos of two women that we had received on WhatsApp For the past two days she has been silent She is not going to school and tuition classes and has stopped playing in the society After she kept mumbling in her sleep we took her to the doctor who said she was scared by whatever we had told herrdquoDonrsquot frighten your kids DocsDr Sagar Karia assistant professor psychiatry department Sion hospital said parents continue to discuss rumours with their young children even after the police debunk them ldquoParents should not scare their kids as it will badly affect their minds They should tell their children that they are with them and nobody can touch them Parents should keep an eye on their kids when they are playing outside or in public placesDoctor Avinash Desousa a consultant psychiatrist said ldquoParents should not believe in rumours on social media Most of the messages are social media spreads and are false Parents must never scare their kids with all these messages as they will affect them emotionally They will be scared of going out Parents must keep a watch when their children are playing outside but they should not believe in rumoursrdquo