Mangaluru: The number of Corona infection cases is on the rise in Dakshina Kannada, with 23 new patients testing positive for the deadly virus on Thursday.

The test reports of 259 people received on Thursday confirmed 23 patients to be COVID-19 positive while 236 tested negative. The total number of cases in the district has gone up to 409, while six people, including a boy, were discharged from hospital on Thursday.

Among the new cases were men and women who returned from Saudi Arabia on June 8 and 11. Also, men aged 28 and 34 years who had primary contact with patient number P-6618. All of them are in quarantine and have been shifted to the district hospital, Deputy Commissioner Sindhu B Rupesh told reporters.

Six men were discharged from the district hospital on Thursday. The number of recovery in the District from the virus has gone up to 176 now.

The district hospital is treating 225 patients and most of them are on the path of recovery. A 70-year-old man suffering from pneumonia and having diabetes, as well as a 52-year-old man with diabetes and cancer, are being treated in the ICU.

Throat swabs of 140 more people were sent to the laboratory for tests on Thursday.

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New Delhi: Gurugram Police have arrested BJP Yuva Morcha member Hariom Mishra, for allegedly spreading a fabricated and communally sensitive story on social media about the murder of a college student in Gurugram.

Mishra who is also known as Shaurya Mishra had shared a collage of four photographs on his X handle earlier this month. He claimed that a 24-year-old college student, identified as Nikita Agarwal, had been murdered by her classmate Arif Khan in Gurugram. In the post, he alleged that the woman was blackmailed, forced into prostitution, gangraped, and eventually killed. He also claimed that Arif dumped her body in a forest. The claims were presented as being based on police sources.

The post went viral and garnering over 1.5 lakh views, and was amplified by several right-wing social media handles across X, Facebook and Instagram. A verification of the claims revealed that no such incident had taken place in Gurugram. A search of credible news reports showed no record of any such murder. The police said this news would have inevitably attracted media attention if it were true.

On December 11, Gurugram Police publicly refuted the claims through their official X handle. They stated that the information which was being circulated was completely false. The police warned that legal action would be taken against those spreading misinformation. Despite the warning, Mishra neither deleted the post nor issued any clarification.

Police in Gurugram confirmed Mishra's arrest on December 16. The police said a FIR was filed after he continued to spread false information about the alleged murder of a Hindu woman by Muslim man. Police said Mishra, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi district, is now being investigated.

Gurugram Police spokesperson Sandeep Singh told The Print that the accused had deliberately misrepresented facts and used objectionable content to spread hatred along religious lines. “Such posts can create serious disturbances in society, and the police take these matters very seriously,” he said.

A reverse image search conducted by fact-checkers at Alt News, revealed that the photographs used in the viral post were unrelated to the claims, while two of the images were traced to a Pinterest account belonging to influencer Maulik Chopra and another image was sourced from an Instagram post by influencer Shivam Thakur featuring a woman named Deepanshi Rawat. The fourth image was found on an unrelated Instagram page. The images depicted different individuals and had no connection to any crime.
Police said they are also investigating Mishra’s motive behind sharing the false and provocative content.