Terrorists on Orkut
By Yasmin Ahmed

Orkut is one of the most popular websites in India.  Google-owned Orkut only has Facebook as a serious competitor.  All other social networking websites in India pale into insignificance.  Orkut is still the place where Indian youth hang out and look for those they want to meet. It is the second most visited site in the country.

As with any other networking website, there are a number of fake profiles on Orkut; not just that, a number of communities that propound not just love and togetherness but hate and the ugly side of human nature too. So when Zazo or Zaheer Abbas of Udaipur, a techie and the founder of Orkutheroes.com, which endeavors to be  a place to build up a community, share information, help others and do some serious social work, was looking round Orkut, he came across an astounding number of sites which advocate terrorism and criminal activity.

The dreaded LeT, he found, had a community with nearly two hundred members and has been in existence since 2005. LeT has publicly confessed to a number of terrorist attacks in India. Another gory Orkut location details on video how to cut off the head of an Indian soldier. Yet another location invites help to translate US Army Manuals and says they are a good source of information on how to improve the war tactics of the terrorist group and judge the “enemy’s” capability. The person who opened the Orkut page talks of how he plans to translate it into Urdu.

LET were behind the recent Mumbai terror attacks.  The US Government declared them a terrorist organization a few years ago.

Zazo did not remain idle, and he reported the abuse to Google, and in an hour’s time, he received the Orkut’s reply in his Inbox. It said that the ‘content did not currently break any policies on Orkut’ and asked him ‘to resubmit the content with additional information’. Zazo thought that it was possible that an automated system receiving emails can make mistake, so he went to that community and reported abuse again. The response was the same. Now he wonders how he can make the matters known to the managers of Orkut. He has used his website the Orkutheroes.com to voice his concerns.

How can Google allow an organization banned in USA and India to use Orkut?

In the light of the escalation of violence and attacks on public life, perhaps these are concerns that need to be taken up by just not lone warriors for the cause of democracy but law makers as well. Anyway, when real world citizens set out to make a difference, and the new methods of mass communication in its real sense form their vehicle, trouble-makers beware! You may not get away with your hate filled agenda at all!