A Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the July 17 Kallakurichi violence on Friday told the Madras High Court that it had so far identified seven WhatsApp groups through which the protesters were suspected to have been instigated to gather and ransack a private school in which a Class XII girl had died on July 13.
In a status report filed before Justice N. Sathish Kumar, who had ordered the constitution of the SIT to identify the instigators of the unprecedented violence, the team said there were 3,875 members in the seven WhatsApp groups, and 50 active members of these groups had been shortlisted on the basis of chat history.
Further, the SIT had identified 63 YouTube channels, 31 Twitter handles and 37 Facebook accounts which had been used to instigate the protesters. The team had sent requests to the nodal officers of the social media giants, seeking the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the individuals concerned and also to block their content.
The court was informed that the investigation into the violence was being probed from all angles and none would be spared. Satisfied with the investigation conducted so far, the judge directed the SIT to continue its investigation, find out the real identity of those who had created social media accounts and file the next status report by August 29.
Justice Kumar was also informed that the videos of the second post-mortem conducted on the Kallakurichi school girl’s body had been handed over to an expert team from the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Postgraduate Medical Educational and Research (Jipmer) in Puducherry on Friday in compliance with the directions issued by the court last week.
The experts would submit their report directly to the Chief Judicial Magistrate, the judge was told.
