On June 29, Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district Police has lodged an FIR against Twitter India’s Managing Director (MD) Manish Maheshwari along with News Partnership Head Amrita Tripathi after the microblogging site misrepresented the map of India. The map showed Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh as a different country.
Twitter has put a distorted map of India for the second time. Earlier, it had shown Leh as a part of China.
The leader of Bajrang Dal, a Hindu nationalist militant organization Praveen Bhati filed the complaint which read, “This act of treason has been committed intentionally and action should be taken.” Bhati added that the world map did not show Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir as parts of the country which has hurt the sentiments of Indians, including the leader.
According to the news agency PTI, the accused have been booked under Section 505 (2) of the Indian Penal Code (creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes) and Section 74 of Information Technology (Amendment) Act 2008.
Information Technology (IT) Ministry’s sources have assured that the government was looking into the issue of ‘distorted map’ at highest levels. Additionally, it would soon issue a notice seeking explanation from the social networking service.
On June 28, senior government officials informed that the social media site had lost the legal protection that is provided to Internet intermediaries under Section 79 of the IT Act since Twitter in India is no longer considered an “intermediary.”
