The Supreme Court on Monday heard the plea seeking directions to the Central Government to restrain all online social media networks operating in India and not to carry out any Islamophobic posts or messages hurting or insulting the feelings of a particular community.
A bench led by the Chief Justice N.V. Ramana and Justice A.S. Bopanna has asked the petitioner who appeared in person to peruse the new IT Rules passed by the Central Government and listed the matter for hearing after a week.
The plea filed by Advocate Khaja Aijazuddin has sought directions to restrain social media platforms from carrying Islamophobic content and to direct a CBI or NIA probe against Twitter, its users involved in putting out “inflammatory posts.”
The plea stated, “A Religious Congregation was conducted from 13th March 2020 to 15th March 2020 at Delhi organized by Tablighi Jamat at Nizamuddin, Delhi where Scholars or attendees have come from across the World and from the different States of India and the Organizers have housed them by providing necessary day to day facilities. After the conclusion of the meeting somewhere after 20.03.2020 there was massive spread of Coronavirus resulting the Government of India declaring 22.03.2020 as “Janata Curfew”, all over the Country which means entire Country on that particular date shall be closed fully and thereafter lockdown was announced by the Government of India on 24.03.2020 till 14.04.2020 and thereafter extended till 17.05.2020. After the attendees were dispersed to their respective States and during or after arriving their respective places, there were some cases of detection of Coronavirus symptoms in the attendees who came from abroad and are staying at Nizamuddin, Delhi where congregation took place, and therefore the “State” took them for Quarantine as per the norms. Due to massive publicity given by the media that many of the positive cases of symptoms of coronavirus were found from Tablighi Jamaat at Nizamuddin, Delhi, there was a massive trending of Tweets on the Twitter attaching the Muslim religion to the cause of spread of coronavirus.”