NOIDA (UTTAR PRADESH): A 19-year-old man was arrested on Friday for reporting a false case of child lifting in a village here, police said.
Accused Aneesh Singh, who runs a grocery store in Hoshiarpur village in Sector 51, had made the call on Uttar Pradesh police's 100 emergency number around 10 am, an official said.
"When the PRV (police response vehicle) reached the village, it turned out that the report was false.
The woman, Singh had accused of lifting a child, is mentally challenged and was rummaging through a pile of garbage in the village," an official from Sector 49 police station told PTI.
However, the rumour of child lifting had triggered panic in the village, prompting the police to arrest the caller under CrPC section 151, he said.
"On preliminary interrogation, Singh told police that he called up on 100 because he thought the woman would lift children. He suspected her to be a child lifter," the policeman said.
The accused has been taken in custody and was being produced in local court, the official said.
On August 28, the Noida Police had arrested a man from Wajidpur village for allegedly spreading rumour about lifting of three children by some car-borne men in Sector 135.
Accused Sushil Kumar had even claimed to fellow villagers that he had tried to save the children but was fired upon by the miscreants, the police said.
Over the past week, scores of incidents have surfaced across the state in which mobs have thrashed individuals over suspected child lifting.
Alarmed over reports of mob violence, the Uttar Pradesh police has decided to use the stringent National Security Act against those spreading rumours on the issue.