Kaushambi: Acting swiftly on an alert from Meta, police here rescued a 20-year-old man who had threatened to consume poison to kill himself in an Instagram post, officials said on Tuesday.

On August 18, Ved Kumar Pal, from Audhan village in the Pipri area uploaded a video purportedly showing a

bottle of poison with a caption in Hindi saying, “Tonight I will drink this poison and my story ends here.”

Meta flagged the post and shared the video, mobile number and location details with the Uttar Pradesh Police headquarters in Lucknow. The information was then passed on to the Kaushambi social media cell, which alerted Pipri police station.

“A police team rushed to the man’s house and managed to save him in time. He was counselled and later handed over to his family,” a senior police officer said.

During counselling, Pal told police that he had picked up the cover of a pesticide bottle his father was using in the fields and made the Instagram post without serious intent.

He then gave a written and oral undertaking that he would not repeat such behaviour. His family thanked the police for their swift response, officials added.