After Twitter, Facebook has now removed content posted by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi that displayed the family of a nine-year-old victim of alleged rape and murder in Northwest Delhi, stating that this content strictly violated the platform’s policies and ethics.
As per the sources, Facebook has notified Gandhi and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) regarding the removal of the posts from social media platforms of Facebook and Instagram. Earlier this week, Facebook had on a note to Gandhi asked him to remove the mentioned post from Instagram — Facebook’s photosharing platform.
“We have taken action to remove the content as it violated our policies,” a Facebook spokesperson averred in an emailed statement on Friday.
Last week, NCPCR had asked Facebook to incorporate appropriate action against Gandhi’s Instagram profile for not posting as per the stated guidelines and simultaneously for violating provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, and the Indian Penal Code. NCPCR had demanded the deletion of the video from the platform.
Earlier this month, Gandhi had met the victim’s family and assured his assistance on their journey to justice and “will not back down even an inch”. Later onwards, he posted a picture of his meeting with the girl’s parents on his Instagram handle. A similar post was shared through his Twitter account due to which the microblogging platform had locked accounts of Gandhi including many others of the same party, INC for posting controversial content.
However, on August 14, Twitter restored Gandhi’s account once he submitted a consent letter from the family of the victim. “As part of the appeal process, @RahulGandhi (the official Twitter handle of Rahul Gandhi) has submitted a copy of the formal consent/authorisation letter to use the referenced image via our India Grievance Channel,” the Twitter spokesperson had said.
