DELHI POLICE...

The toolkit became a talking point after Thunberg shared a link to the document on Wednesday, deleted it, and then again posted an updated link on Thursday. “Here’s an updated toolkit by people on the ground in India if you want to help. (They removed their previous document as it was outdated.),” Thunberg, who has supported the farmers protesting against three controversial agricultural laws, said.

The updated toolkit, which HT has seen, gave a brief description of the ongoing farmers’ agitation and called upon people to participate or organise on-ground protests, post tweets supporting the agitation, contact legal representatives and sign petitions. It did not appear to be out of the ordinary as guidelines for online protest campaigns go.

The farmers’ agitation has been getting global attraction with international celebrities such as pop star Rihanna and activist Thunberg tweeting in support of the protesters. Actor Amanda Cerny, singers Jay Sean and Dr Zeus, and US sporting icons Juju Smith Schuster, Baron Davis and Kyle Kuzma supported the farmers. They were joined by lawmakers from the UK, the US and other countries.

Police are probing the contents of the first “toolkit” that was brought down, according to officials who did not want to be named. Officials did not explain how international celebrities and lawmakers became a part of the campaign.

Ranjan said the toolkit had an action plan that called for “digital strikes through hashtags” on or before January 26, “tweets storm” from January 23, and “physical action” on January 26, among others. “Design of the author of the toolkit is to create disharmony among various social, religious and cultural groups and encourage disaffection against the government of India. It also aims at waging social, cultural and economic war against India,” he said. The FIR was registered by the cyber cell of the Delhi Police under the Indian Penal Code’s sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 124A (spreading disharmony), 153 (provocation with intent to cause riots) and 153A (promoting enmity between different groups). Ranjan said the toolkit was noticed by the police while monitoring social media accounts peddling “hateful and malicious content”.