Smruti Shekhar Panchal, a resident of Bhayanderpada, Thane, reportedly having hundreds of fake facebook accounts and several Gmail accounts got arrested by Cyber police for not only trolling Amruta Fadnavis but by using a fake account she posted abusive messages in response to a post by Amruta Fadnavis, a complaint filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) youth wing functionary Pallavi Sapre. According to the complaint, Sapre came across a post by Amruta Fadnavis on September 7, which pertained to a function and included some photographs.
A Facebook user named Ganesh Kapoor made three objectionable comments as responses to that post. The comments were “highly abusive, vulgar and derogatory in nature,” a cyber-police officer said. Following Sapre’s complaint, the Mumbai cyber police sought details of the account holder and the IP address of the electronic device from which the comments were posted.
This led them to Panchal, in whose name the device was listed. She was arrested from her residence on Monday evening. Panchal has been booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act, 2000, and both her mobile handsets have been seized by the police for the investigation. Police interrogation revealed that Panchal had created a fake account on the social media platform and abused Fadnavis. They also found that this was not the first time she had done so.
Yashasvi Yadav, special inspector general of police, state cyber police said “Panchal is a serial offender and she had similarly abused people using her original Facebook account, following which in November 2021 the authorities wrote to Facebook to “take down” her account as it was abusive. The account was taken down by Facebook. She then created another Facebook account in the name of Ganesh Kapoor. For this she has also created a similar sounding fake email account,” the official quoted above said. “We have found 53 fake social media accounts and 16 fake email accounts from her mobile phones. She has been harassing Amruta Fadnavis for the last two years. After we managed to take down her account last year she created this fake account in the name of Ganesh Kapoor,”
Amruta Fadnavis always maintained dignified calm on social media trolls and she gave several statements to the media stating that she ignores the trolls. “It’s natural to get trolled on social media “I post on social media and then forget. I don’t look back to keep tabs on trolls, but focus on giving positive criticism when needed. It’s about endurance. You have to change your mind-set about trolls so they don’t attack you.”
