Bhubaneswar: The Opposition BJD has lodged a police complaint over alleged “objectionable and scurrilous” posts on social media against party chief Naveen Patnaik and his close associates V K Pandian and the latter’s wife Sujata R Karthikeyan.
The regional party’s IT and social media cell head and former MP Amar Patnaik had written in detail about the ‘defamatory content’ to Odisha DGP Y B Khurania and requested him to treat it as an FIR.
“The posts were so insensitive, sub-standard and in poor taste that I, as head of the BJD IT and Social Media cell, have been compelled to lodge a strong protest and complaint with @DGPOdisha to take immediate action to not only ask @Meta to take down these posts immediately, but also apprehend the handlers of these pages and initiate immediate criminal action against them,” Patnaik wrote in a post on X while sharing his letter to the DGP.
He said that these posts were put up even as the former CM and Leader of Opposition in Odisha Assembly was hospitalised due to dehydration.
“If no action is taken immediately, I and the people of Odisha would be convinced that these posts were initiated and disseminated at the behest of @BJP4Odisha and the Government of @MohanMOdisha from fake handles to cause criminal defamation, public outrage and disharmony and mental stress not only to the leaders on the video, but, in fact, to the people of Odisha at large,” he added.
He also mentioned how AI-generated videos projected Pandian and his wife, both former IAS officers, poorly. “The entire content posted by the Facebook ID is malicious, slanderous and clearly intended to incite public discontent, defame public figures and disrupt political and social harmony,” the BJD leader noted.
Patnaik further stated that the those operating the Facebook account prima facie attract offences under various sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and the Information Technology Act, 2000.
