A screenshot of the Facebook posting by account holder Bini Wat Gandai showing a group of students assembling at Town Villa in which he assumed they were going to fight.
KUCHING: Police have arrested two more social media users in Sibu for posting a status that was found to be completely false.
A team from CID Sibu picked up a 20-year-old unemployed woman and her 45-year-old brother-in-law, who is a clerk with a government agency, at noon yesterday and confiscated their mobile phones.
State CID chief Datuk Dev Kumar pointed out that some users seemed completely oblivious to the hardline approach taken by the police despite wide media coverage of social media users being arrested for disseminating false crime news in Sarawak.
“The police were notified of a Facebook status by an account holder using the moniker Bini Wat Gandai on Friday (Feb 24). The status alleged that a group of student thugs from SMK Sibujaya were assembling illegally at Town Villa, Sibujaya to fight and commit violence,” he revealed in a statement.
The post further added that the situation was creating a public nuisance to the residents of an apartment block in that area and urged police to take immediate action.
The status was accompanied by several photos showing civilians and students in school uniform.
“The photos were taken during the day but the status was posted at about 11pm. Upon being notified of the posting, a team from CID Sibu was dispatched to the school to investigate the matter,” he said.
Investigation revealed that no such incident occurred the previous day or any other day as alleged by the Facebook account holder.
“The photos were taken during the normal peak hours where parents were sending their children to school,” he said.
The Facebook account holder, he added, then posted another status accompanied by three photos thanking the police for resolving the matter that never occurred.
“We were not amused by this false news. A police report was subsequently lodged against the false posting,” he said.
The women, according to Dev, said that she saw the posting in her brother-in-law’s WeChat and copied and pasted the posting to her Facebook profile without verifying the truth of the matter.
The brother-in-law gave the excuse that he saw a group of students in front of the school and assumed they were going to fight.
He took several photos and posted them in his WeChat. The case is being investigated under Section 500 of the Penal Code and 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998.
“Sarawak police will continue to take an uncompromising approach towards fake news and misinformation in the social media that could create unnecessary concern and fear among the community,” Dev warned.
A screenshot of another posting that followed thanking the police for resolving the matter that never occurred.