Tripura Police book man for allegedly using CM’s photo on Facebook profile, sharing sensitive posts
However, the police said it was not a case of online impersonation or hacking.
The Tripura Police on Thursday arrested a person for allegedly using a photograph of Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Facebook and “sharing sensitive posts”. West Tripura Superintendent of Police Abhijit Saptarshi told Scroll.in that the police had booked Sipahijala district resident Hossain Anwar for “cheating by personation by using computer resource” under the Information Technology Act.
The police officer said Anwar had used the chief minister’s photograph as his Facebook profile picture and was “sharing politically sensitive comments and making political comments”. The officer added that the man’s name on the Facebook page was Hossain Kamal instead of Hossain Anwar.
The police officer said the chief minister’s information technology cell had raised an alarm over the allegedly incendiary nature of the posts Anwar shared, prompting the police to register a suo moto complaint.
It was not immediately clear what the contents of the posts were.
According to Mrinal Kanti Deb, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s spokesperson in Tripura, it was a case of an impostor creating a fake profile in the chief minister’s name. He claimed Biplab Kumar Deb’s personal Facebook account had also been briefly hacked.
However, Saptarshi said it was not a case of online impersonation or hacking. “But there were concerns that he might have been doing this for some wrongful gains,” he said. “We will get to know what his exact motives were only after interrogation.”
Anwar has been bought to Agartala for questioning, he added.
The chief minister blamed the incident on the previous Communist Party of India (Marxist) government, saying it did not do enough to beef up cyber security in the state, The Telegraph reported.
Earlier this month, the BJP surged to power in Tripura defeating the CPI(M), which had been at the helm for the last 25 years.