The Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police has booked the India-based heads of Twitter, WhatsApp and TikTok on a complaint that alleged that they were allowing people to upload and post messages and videos that are against “Nation and Religion”.
The case was filed on the basis of a complaint from a journalist S Srishailam, following the Telangana High Court issued directives to register the case. In his complaint, Srisailam accuses the Indian divisions of these three social media firms of intentionally circulating “objectionable video and word content” over their platforms, causing “damage to the Nation integration and communal harmony” for personal gains. The complaint further claimed that these firms have a “hidden agenda” and allow people to create groups and web pages in vernacular languages to spread the content.
“Some of the anti-social elements under the guise of freedom of expression, started a social media campaign against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019, merging the same with proposed National Registry of Citizens (NRC) across the country,” it read.
The complainant claims that these anti-social elements are circulating the content without verifying the content and goes on to accuse these firms of “waging war against India through propaganda to create disharmony, feelings of enmity, hearted and ill will among Indian citizens”.
Accusing WhatsApp of allowing to groups that are against CAA to thrive on their platform, the complainant has also attached the phone numbers of 26 such Whatsapp group.
Silveri claimed that Twitter in India did not take action against those accounts that are circulating dubious content against religion and India and that TikTok allowed users to register protest against the CAA, “videos of protests overlapped with antinationalism videos, dialogue and abused and offensive words against Indian national leaders where lakhs of people viewing liking and commenting about derogatory videos”.
Agencies quoted the police to say that notices would be issued to the respondents seeking their comments.