India seeks US help to identify cyber offenders

NEW DELHI, India - Indian government is seeking help from the United States and Saudi Arabia governments to identify those who put on cyberspace doctored images that led to the exodus of the country's Northeast people from various Indian cities, reported local daily Hindustan Times on Wednesday.

The Home Ministry of India is also exploring legal action against social media platforms that haven't complied with its directives to block access to the offensive webpages, according to the newspaper.

Legal requests are being sent to the two countries since the computer servers of the websites are located there, according to the report.

India also said many of the websites which triggered the exodus of northeast people are located in Pakistan.

Besides, New Delhi also wants the United States to nudge internet companies like Google and Yahoo, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and Google-controlled YouTube to take steps to preserve the data on their servers beyond the mandatory 30-day period to enable a team of Indian experts to cull cyber forensic evidence to nail the culprits, according to the newspaper.

Doctored images of violence on websites caused a massive exodus of tens of thousands of people from the northeast states of India over the past one week from some southern and western cities of India.

The images were accompanied with rumors that Muslims would attack people from the northeast after Eid, which fell last Monday, due to communal violence in the northeast Indian state of Assam which has killed over 70 people.