LUCKNOW: Two senior officials of Twitter India including its managing director Manish Maheshwari have been booked by police from Bulandshashr district of West Uttar Pradesh for allegedly showing a distorted map of India on the social media major’s website.
The case was registered against Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari and its news partnership head Amrita Tripathi at the Khurja Kotwali late on Monday night on the complaint of a local Bajrang Dal leader.
The two Twitter India senior officials have been booked under Section 505(2) of the IPC (statements conducing to public mischief) and Section 74 of the Information Technology (Amendments) Act 2008 which deals with publication for fraudulent purpose, a senior Bulandshahr district police officer confirmed to The New Indian Express on Tuesday.
An uproar was created after a world map showing J&K and Ladakh detached from India emerged on the career section of the social media major’s website on Monday. Twitter had removed the concerned map from its website following the controversy.
“The map doesn’t show J&K and Ladakh as part of India, which isn’t coincidental, but has been deliberately done to hurt the sentiments of all Indians, including me,” the complainant Bajrang Dal West UP convener Praveen Bhati alleged in the complaint.
This the second case registered by police against the Twitter India top brass within a month in West UP.
Earlier, on June 15, an FIR was registered by the Ghaziabad Police against Twitter and seven others, including three journalists Muhmad Zubair, Rana Ayyub and Saba Naqvi and a leading news portal, for posting over social media "unverified facts" about the recent thrashing of an elderly man in the West UP district's Loni Road area.