Nagpur Police Wikipedia page tampered with; city police image tainted
| Date :19-Mar-2019 |
Staff Reporter,
THE Nagpur Police got the taste of what cyber miscreants are capable of when they discovered that their introduction on Wikipedia had been tampered with. Interestingly, the cops were not aware of their image-maligning some miscreants had done on the Wikipedia page. It was only when ‘The Hitavada’ brought the mischief to their notice that the Cyber Cell got into a damage control mode and re-edited the Wiki information. For a few days the Wikipedia described Nagpur Police as “the worst, most corrupt, specially Kalamna police having good relations with thieves and hooligans in the law enforcement and investigation division of Indian Police Service with jurisdiction over Nagpur District.”
The Cyber Crime unit was unaware of the changes made in its wiki page. ‘The Hitavada’ brought these changes to the notice of DCP EOW and Cyber Crime, Shweta Khedkar on Monday morning. She immediately checked the details and informed her team to edit the changes. The team then managed to delete the entire introductory paragraph on the page. “In Wikipedia, anyone can edit the content without revealing his or her identity. My team tried to get the details of who has done it. Such misleading information will definitely portray a wrong picture of Nagpur police. This should not happen. I will be sending an official letter to the concerned authority as something should be done in this case,” said Khedkar. Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopaedia, is a source of information for all.
People, especially youths blindly believe the contents and facts about any subject given. But not all the information provided by the encyclopaedia is always true. Nagpur Police just found out the flip side of this. Khedkar said, “Major section of the society, especially youths and students who are preparing for competitive exams rely on Wikipedia. Info on the pages can be edited by anyone which means that any information it contains could be right or just wrong.” Wikipedia generally uses reliable secondary sources, which vet data from primary sources. Anyone with Internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles, except in limited cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism. .