In the latest escalation between micro-blogging platform, Twitter and India, the police have filed preliminary charges against senior officials of the US firm over an inaccurate map of the country, officials have disclosed.
Uttar Pradesh state police said the criminal case was filed against two Twitter India officials late Monday following a complaint from the local head of a Hindu nationalist group that the US firm’s website showed the disputed Kashmir region as an independent country.
Africa Today News, New York gathered that the map was already taken down from Twitter’s ‘Tweep Life’ career section after an uproar by social media users on Monday against the micro-blogging site.
A police official told reporters that Twitter’s India head Manish Maheshwari and another senior employee were being investigated for breaching India’s IT laws and causing public mischief.
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‘This act has hurt the sentiments of Indians, including me,‘ Praveen Bhati from Bajrang Dal, a militant Hindu group, said in his complaint.
The government has taken a tough stance against any perceived distortion of India’s borders in recent years, particularly over the depiction of Kashmir that is partly ruled by India and Pakistan but claimed in full by the South Asian arch-rivals.
Twitter has been locked for several months in an acrimonious row with New Delhi over new rules for social media companies operating in India.
The regulations require firms to remove and identify the ‘first originator’ of posts deemed to undermine India’s sovereignty, state security or public order.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK