On Sunday morning, a block level Congress worker, Onkar Singh Bajwa was shot at by unknown gunmen at his residence in Gurdaspur. According to the police, the attack is linked to a spat that happened between Bajwa and gangster Harry Majithia on a Facebook post.
While talking to a leading daily, Bajwa recalled the incident, “Two men with their faces covered knocked at his door and as soon as I opened the door, one of the men fired four bullets on me which hit my leg.” Bajwa alleged that he had received a threat on Facebook prior to the incident.
Gangster Harry Majithian accused a police officer of drug peddling in a Facebook post in which Onkar Singh Bajwa also commented after which the argument turned ugly and Majithia threatened to shoot Bajwa.
This is not the first time an online spat blew up into something really serious. Here are some other similar incidents.
WhatsApp murder of Sonipat
Earlier this year (June 2018, to be precise), a 28-year-old Sonipat-based man was killed after a WhatsApp group argument escalated. The victim (Luv Kumar) died on the spot after he was attacked by the accused (Dinesh Kumar) administrator of the WhatsApp group. The accused and the victim belong to the goldsmith community. To bring the community together, Dinesh Kumar, who runs a sanitary shop, created a WhatsApp group named ‘Johri’. Luv Kumar and Dinesh had an argument over the material posted by Dinesh. Though they were strangers and only linked through the group, following an argument they argued on the telephone too.
Instagram spat leads to murder
In May 2018, two teenage girls were stabbed after an argument on Instagram in London. The 17-year-old victims, reportedly, were attacked by another girl of the same age. The exact argument was not disclosed by the police officials, reported Independent.
Chicago Facebook spat
According to a Review-Journal report, in April 2014, a Facebook fight between two 14-year-old Chicago girls ended with one of them being killed. Apparently, they were arguing over a boy.
Twitter spat leads to murder in the US
Two childhood friends Kwame Dancy and Jameg Blake started arguing over a girl in Harlem, New York City. Things changed and they started insulting each other on Twitter, and by December 1, 2010, their fight ended with Blake murdering Dancy by shooting in his neck. As per NYDaily, Blake was sentenced for 21 years.
Not just arguments, but there have been incidents where social media ‘addiction’ has taken lives. Last month a married couple in Bengaluru killed themselves after quarrelling over the woman’s alleged addiction to Facebook. The 28-year-old man and his 23-year-old wife hanged themselves in two different rooms of their residence.
