Are you one of those people who forward messages or are a group admin on Whatsapp? Forwarding unverified messages, or circulating hate messages in your group can land you in big trouble. WhatsApp now has over 1.5 billion users, information can go viral in minutes as individual’s forward messages along to their friends or groups, without any way to determine its origin.
This has been the can in India, where a WhatsApp admin has been put behind bars for a message he did not send but the fact that he was the default admin of the group. A 21-year-old has been languishing in jail for the past five months. Junaid Khan was arrested in February this year after a WhatsApp group he was part of caught attention after one Irfan sent an objectionable forward on it.
Locals filed a complaint at Talen police station, and a case was registered against Junaid and Irfan. A B.Sc student and a resident of Talen, Junaid was then registered under the Information Technology (IT) Act, as well as IPC Section 124A or charges of sedition on February 14, 2018.
Acting on the complaint, the police summoned the boy and the then group administrator, Raja Gurjar. However, Gurjar had left the WhatsApp group. Two more members then became administrators as per the sequence of their membership, but they also quit the group subsequently.
“Finally, Junaid became the group administrator as per the policy of the social media platform,” a family member of Junaid claimed.
