Mumbai police block over 650 controversial Charlie Hebdo posts on social media

The Mumbai police blocked over 650 posts or pages on a social media site for uploading controversial cartoons of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo 24 hours after the terror attack on the magazine’s office in Paris. [caption id=“attachment_2038557” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] “We are on alert. We are blocking every controversial post/page that we come across,” Mumbai police spokesperson Dhananjay Kulkarni said, according to Hindustan Times. “We are in constant touch with the authorities managing the server of a popular networking site based in the United States of America (USA) to immediately block such posts and provide us with the IP address of the account holders,” he added. This decision by the Mumbai police was taken even as Charlie Hebdo announced on Thursday it will defy its attackers and publish a special edition with a print run of a million copies next week, as a wave of public support rose up to save it from bankruptcy. Surviving columnist Patrick Pelloux told AFP that the magazine would bring out a “survivors’ issue” next Wednesday to show that “stupidity will not win” after the attack on its headquarters which left 12 dead. The newspaper’s lawyer, Richard Malka, said that the 60,000 copies Charlie Hebdo that would normally print was being multiplied because of the massive attention worldwide brought by Wednesday’s bloody attack. Malka spoke after attending a meeting of the 30 remaining staff that discussed the paper’s future and how to bring out the issue. All agreed that “the next issue has to come out - it’s the best way to pay homage to the dead and to show that they (the attackers) did not kill us off,” he said. The cartoon-reliant newspaper - with a name inspired by the American comic book character Charlie Brown from the series Peanuts (with “Hebdo” being French slang for weekly) - will present a special issue of eight pages instead of its usual 16, Malka said. The leftwing French daily newspaper Liberation will host Charlie Hebdo’s journalists from Friday, because the weekly’s own blood-soaked, bullet-riddled offices are sealed after the attack. Other major French media, including AFP, Le Monde newspaper and Canal+ television, are also offering assistance. A French media fund managing 60 million euros ($70 million) donated by Google in 2013 will make an unspecified financial contribution to Charlie Hebdo. Government agencies have also taken subscriptions to the newspaper to lend it support. (With inputs from AFP)