Photo: The US media fanned the flames of religious conflict in India. The photo shows Christians in Hyderabad holding a demonstration in August last year. \Associated Press

The concerns of the Indian media are not groundless. Before and after the Manipur riots broke out, the number of reports on religious conflicts in India by the US media surged. Last year, the number of related reports exceeded 400. Before the halfway point of this year, the number of reports has reached 1,700, while the number of reports each year before was basically around 300. On social media, a large amount of false information about Manipur has also emerged. Some fictitious incidents of sexual assault on Meitei women have been hyped up, inciting Meitei community members to use violent means to “retaliate.”

Last July, a video of a Kuki woman being paraded naked and sexually assaulted by a Methai man went viral on social media, adding fuel to the tension in Manipur. According to Indian media reports, the incident was caused by fake news about a Methai woman being raped and murdered by a Kuki man. The conflict continued to escalate under the media hype and social media fanning the flames.

Faced with public pressure, Modi finally broke his silence and claimed that the events in Manipur were “shameful for any civilized society”, but his belated statement was ridiculed as “crocodile tears” and did not help ease the situation.

According to statistics from Yuyuan Tantian, in the past year, more than 30,000 social media accounts have frequently participated in discussions on religious conflicts in India, of which 2,720 are suspected robot accounts. Many of these suspected robot accounts have directly participated in the release of information related to Manipur. Yuyuan Tantian pointed out that behind the conflict in Manipur, someone is using social robots to release false information and fan the flames.