India’s information technology ministry warned Facebook Inc.-owned WhatsApp on Tuesday that the spread of fake news on its platform in the country has been an accomplice to a slew of beatings and lynchings.

Indian Today reported that in the last few months alone, more than two dozen people have been lynched in the country, with five people on Sunday the latest victims. It’s said that was the work of a mob in Maharashtra who had lynched five men after news spread on WhatsApp said that they were child abductors.

Just a few hours after that, another five people, including two women and a two-year-old boy in a neighboring district were saved from an angry mob after another rumor had spread on social media. Last week three men were killed after rumors were ignited by a local politician that a boy had died after having his kidneys harvested.

Although there are about 200 million WhatsApp users in India, it’s reported that the mob violence is happening in mostly rural areas where many people are using social media apps for the first time. Rumors are mostly related to certain people being child traffickers or organ harvesters.

The Indian government has told WhatsApp that it must share some accountability for these actions, stating that there has to be “immediate action to end this menace.” According to Indian media, lynchings are taking place in the country on a weekly basis, and social media is partly the reason for the upsurge.

“While the Law and order machinery is taking steps to apprehend the culprits, the abuse of platform like WhatsApp for repeated circulation of such provocative content are equally a matter of deep concern,” said an IT ministry spokesperson. “Deep disapproval of such developments has been conveyed to the senior management of the WhatsApp and they have been advised that necessary remedial measures should be taken to prevent proliferation of these fake and at times motivated and sensational messages.”

The spread of fake news is being fought on social media to some extent, but the Indian government wants WhatsApp to stop the spread of rumors before they can proliferate. Such a task might well be Sisyphean, given how quickly it seems the rumors lead to violence.

WhatsApp has in recent times tried to introduce features that might stem the flow of fake news but is also concentrating its efforts on educating people about hoaxes and rumors that circulate online. WhatsApp introduced a feature last week that made it so only admins could send or approve messages to groups. There’s also a feature still in beta that will label all forwarded messages.

It’s not as easy to see who starts the rumors on WhatsApp as it is on services such as Facebook because WhatsApp messages are encrypted. That’s not good enough for Indian critic Nikhil Pahwa, who told The Washington Post that WhatsApp “needs to evolve.” On Monday Pahwa posted a list of possible technological solutions to this crisis in India.

Image: Informedmag via Flickr