The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: A day after it was reported that the Goa government has issued a statement against several claims on social media that its tourism infrastructure is lacking, it has filed a police complaint against the person whose post led to the conversation. Entrepreneur Ramanuj Mukherjee has called it a misuse of the law to shut down criticism.
Indian Express has reported that Goa’s deputy director of tourism, Rajesh Kale, wrote in his complaint to the Superintendent of Police of the cyber crime police station in Panaji, that he was “writing to formally lodge a complaint regarding an incident of public mischief that occurred on November 5, at approximately 3:52 pm”.
That is the time stamp of when Mukherjee posted on X about the downslide in foreign tourists at Goa. His post prompted several thousands to comment, with many chiming in with their experiences with taxi unions and hotels.
The report noted that according to Kale, the entrepreneur, Ramanuj Mukherjee, “disseminated false data through his social media X handles, thereby causing significant annoyance to local businesses and inducing fear or alarm within the local community”.
Mukherjee had posted a chart from the database of the China Economic Information Center. Kale in his complaint questioned this data “as he neither consulted with the Department of Tourism prior to posting nor validated the data he collected”.
Kale’s complaint also claimed that the state’s tourism department was concerned that this action “may be part of a hidden agenda aimed at undermining Goa’s state image.”
It further said:
“Goa has long been recognised as a prominent tourism destination for both domestic and international visitors. The propagation of such false statements not only jeopardises the reputation of our state but also poses a serious threat to public tranquillity.
While the Express report notes that Mukherjee did not respond to the paper, early today (November 9), he wrote on X with a screengrab of an Express journalist asking for his comments on the complaint.
“Turns out Goa Tourism decided the best course of action when tens of thousands of people are complaining about how badly they were treated in the state is this,” Mukherjee wrote.
He then added that his response was the following, highlighting that the action was a “misuse of law to shut down criticism”:
“It is unfortunate that instead of acting on complaints by thousands of tourists on social media regarding various tourist scams they faced in Goa, which by the way I did not highlight, and merely shared publicly available data which I also cited, the authorities are trying to intimidate me with a baseless police case. They should have put the correct data out there if they think my cited data is wrong instead of what appears to be a misuse of law to shut down criticism. I will counter this intimidation through legal means.”
Goa’s cyber crime police noted that it is yet to formally receive the complaint.
A day ago, the state government, in a statement, claimed that comparing the state to another country like Sri Lanka may yield an “inaccurate perspective”.