Kalaiselvan, one of the remandees who have been released, holding a basic phone with no WhatsApp. Most of them, the villagers believe, are spectators. Over 42 people have been remanded in custody and have not been released in the past 10 days. Police have gone door to door, distributed pamphlets and travelling in rickshaws with megaphones urging people not to believe in rumours on WhatsApp. Tiruvannamalai, the sleepy temple town, has since then been gripped with fear. Over 52 children have been abducted in the district and police are hiding complaints from us,” are floating around, and another one that hits closer to Tiruvannamalai, reads that a man from Rajasthan has been arrested at Vandavasi for abducting a child. Similarly, messages such as – “Don’t allow your children to leave the house alone. Along with the messages of fear mongering around child abduction is a video of two men riding a bike, picking up a child playing cricket on the road and speeding away, which again, sources have debunked as “old and fake.” ![]() Locals, police and journalists who have been receiving these messages on their smartphones, say the deluge of false information began in early April. ![]() What if she had taken those children away?”Īccording to reports, there have so far been t hree lynching deaths in less than a fortnight. She came in a car, like it was shown in that WhatsApp video. “She was giving them Malaysian chocolates,” says Neela, a resident of the village, adding, “of course, we had to suspect her. Men from Athimoor and surrounding villages suspected her to be a child trafficker. A week ago, a 65 year-old tourist Rukmini was lynched by a 200-strong mob after she was found distributing chocolates to children in the area. The village is deserted, the shops shuttered, and the houses locked. Chennai: “Go away,” screams Neela, an old woman seated on a pavement in Athimoor village in Polur, 25 kilometres from Tiruvannamalai district.
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