THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the stage set for Thrissur Pooram on Tuesday, the police have set aside a special cyber team to sanitise digital platforms to prevent the dissemination of toxic remarks that could foment communal and political unrest.
According to sources, around 20 officers with digital expertise have been deputed to monitor social media platforms to purge communal messages that could ignite strife. This is the first time the state police is taking such a measure ahead of the Thrissur Pooram, a source told TNIE.
Last year, the pooram fireworks display was disrupted in an unprecedented manner, following which allegations were raised that it was done to give political mileage to a certain party in the Lok Sabha polls.
Fingers were also pointed at the police for its alleged highhandedness. The UDF had harped on the police’s role and the alleged intervention from ADGP M R Ajith Kumar to drive home its allegation that the pooram was sabotaged to help the BJP score political brownie points.
After the 2024 Thrissur Pooram, and in the run up to the current edition, social media have been witnessing a war of words -- with political and religious overtones -- over the fiasco, prompting the cops to step up their game.
The arrangement, sources said, has been in place since Saturday, with the sleuths doing real-time surveillance of social media and cyber platforms and removing potentially troublesome content.
“Immediate action is taken against the content flagged hazardous. Such content is immediately purged by the sleuths using the available means or they get in touch with the up-loaders and ask them to remove it,” the source said.