The Ghaziabad police on Thursday sent a notice to the Managing Director of Twitter India in connection with the viral video of an elderly man being assaulted in Loni area in Ghaziabad. Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari has been asked to appear at the Loni Border police station in Ghaziabad within seven days to get his statement recorded in the case in which an FIR was lodged against the social media giant, a police official said.
In a video that went viral on social media, an elderly Muslim man had accused four men of beating him up, chopping his beard and asking him to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram.’ However, the Ghaziabad police ruled out a communal angle in the incident, and said that the man did not allege in his statement that he was asked to chant the slogan.
After the video went viral, the Ghaziabad Police filed an FIR against Twitter, news website The Wire, besides some journalists and Congress leaders over the circulation of the video. The police have said that the video was shared to cause communal unrest. The police have maintained that the incident took place because the accused were unhappy over the 'tabeez' (amulets) sold to them by the man, Abdul Shamad Saifi. The Ghaziabad Police has so far arrested nine people in the case.
The FIR names Twitter Inc, Twitter Communications India, news website The Wire, journalists Mohammed Zubair and Rana Ayyub, Congress leaders Salman Nizami, Maskoor Usmani, Shama Mohamed and writer Saba Naqvi.
The FIR states that despite the Ghaziabad police ruling out any communal angle in the incident, those named as accused did not delete their tweets. The police have said that Twitter did not take any action against the “inciteful” tweets that were spreading “misinformation” on the social media platform.
The Editors Guild of India and the Mumbai Press Club have condemned the FIRs filed against journalists.