Mumbai: Police are looking into fake social media accounts set up after Sushant Singh Rajput’s death.

“The fake accounts will be in thousands. We are collecting details. These accounts were used to do false propaganda and to malign the police force for the last few months,” city police chief Param Bir Singh said.

Investigations by cyber police have found that since the actor’s suicide, fake accounts were created to demoralise Mumbai police. “The police commissioner has been trolled with abusive contents on the official Instagram handle and other official online media handles. And all the abusive messages to Mumbai police were hashtagged with the late actor’s name,” said a police officer.

Mumbai cyber DCP Rashmi Karandikar told TOI, “There are multiple fake social media account holders trolling the Mumbai police commissioner on different platforms and are using abusive language against him and the force. Hence an FIR has been registered against those account holders under Section 67 of IT Act,” she said. “Earlier, an FIR was registered on September 2 against a suspect who used a morphed image of the official Twitter account of Mumbai police commissioner and through it posted derogatory contents. We have started the probe in both matters,” said Karandikar.

The cyber police team has asked offices of all the social media platforms to provide details of the fake accounts created in the last three months since the actor’s death and the IP address used to create the accounts.

“Initially, the cyber police had asked to block all the accounts and the messages. Now we have started collecting details of accounts,” an officer said.

The fake accounts were used to troll the police commissioner’s social media handle with hashtags like #JusticeForSSR and #SushantConspiracyExposed.

The unknown account holders have been booked under the Information Technology Act for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form. The offence attracts a maximum punishment of 5 years and with fine which may extend to Rs 5 or 10 lakh.

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People behind social media handles that unfairly targeted Mumbai police for its investigation in the Sushant Singh Rajput case will not be allowed to get away with it. We have been tracking these handles for some time now and some arrests will be made soon,” Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh told Mumbai Mirror on Monday. Its conclusion that there was no foul play in Sushant’s death now vindicated by an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) report calling it a clear case of suicide, the city police is now in the process of filing cases against Twitter and Facebook accounts that accused it of a “sell-out” and destruction of evidence.

Mumbai police faced some vile abuse before and after the Bihar police was allowed to file an FIR in the case and the case itself was eventually transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) mid-August. The Bihar police had stepped in after Sushant’s family filed a case in Patna, accusing Mumbai police of not investigating the foul play angle seriously. The family also alleged that over Rs 15 crore from the actor’s account had disappeared and they suspected Sushant’s girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty had siphoned off the money.

Rhea and her brother Showik were eventually arrested not for murder or money laundering, but for procuring drugs.Though multiple agencies have been involved, no evidence of money laundering has been brought to light so far.

“Truth always prevails!,” Singh said, adding that he never had any doubt about the investigation carried out by his men or the findings of the post-mortem carried out at Cooper Hospital. “The forensic team also did a professional job. Our collective conclusion was that Sushant committed suicide. It was just a set of motivated social media accounts spreading disinformation to discredit Mumbai police. The findings of AIIMS are not any different from what Cooper Hospital doctors had concluded. In fact, the Supreme Court was also satisfied with our investigations,” he said.

Singh said while allowing the transfer of the case to CBI, the SC had authorised the Mumbai police to investigate the matter further. “Accordingly, an FIR was registered against Sushant’s sister and doctor based on Rhea’s complaint that they gave him medicines without any medical prescription. This investigation is also now with the CBI,” he said.

On Mumbai police’s failure to register an FIR in the case, Singh said an ADR (accidental death report) was filed as is the norm in suicide cases. “Our investigations were ongoing when the case was transferred. If we had found any evidence of foul play or abetment, we would have converted the ADR into an FIR,” he said, adding that Sushant’s family had not named any suspects in the case in a statement recorded on June 16. “We never said no to registering an offence in the matter. The family was categorical that they did not wish to name anyone in the complaint. The family never came back to record a fresh statement despite our officers calling them several times,” Singh said.

He said in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, when the Mumbai police was losing men nearly every day, it was demoralising to face charges of unprofessionalism and collusion with an “imaginary set of murderers.” Singh said he hopes that the CBI will carry out a proper investigation. “It is a very professional agency and it will look into all aspects professionally and reach a proper conclusion.”