Cracking down on websites circulating morphed pictures and videos, government today blocked 250 of them for uploading doctored videos and pictures that triggered exodus of northeast people from Karnataka and some other parts, PTI reported. Government ordered blocking of 80 more internet pages and user-accounts on Sunday on social networking sites including Facebook, Google and Twitter to avoid panic among people of northeastern region living across India. All these sites were found hosting inflammatory and hateful content, spreading rumours and inciting violence targeting the people from north-east, government sources said.
On Saturday, the government had issued instructions to block 76 internet sites, which included web-pages and some websites, and had said that bulk of the rumours that triggered panic among people of north-eastern states in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra were sourced from Pakistan.
In the meanwhile, Pakistan has assured India that it will "look into" its assertion that elements in Pakistan used social media to whip up panic that led to the exodus of people from the northeastern states, but demanded that New Delhi first provide evidence for it.
"The Indian minister has said that rumours were generated from Pakistan through cellular services," Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik told reporters in Islamabad while referring to his phone conversation with home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Sunday.