Tripura police imposed the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) on 102 people for allegedly spreading misinformation on Tripura violence and also served notices to the authorities of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to deactivate the account of the people who were named in the FIR. In the latest development in the Tripura tweets case, Journalist Shyam Meera Singh and other activists on whom Tripura police imposed UAPA has now moved to Supreme Court seeking to quash the first information report ( FIR) registered against them.
Earlier, Shyam Meera Singh through his Twitter handle informed that Tripura police imposed UAPA on him for merely writing three words on the microblogging platform, “Tripura is Burning.”
Meanwhile, UAPA notices were also sent to Supreme Court lawyers Amit Srivastava, Ansar Indori, Mukesh Kumar, and Ehtesham Hashmi. And, the Tripura police mentioned that they imposed UAPA on the advocates because they posted provocative posts on social media. The lawyers who were booked under UAPA formed a fact-finding inquiry into the communal violence in Tripura before putting their findings on social media.
Tripura police also asked Twitter to suspend the accounts of people on whom they imposed UAPA. Journalist Shyam Meera Singh shared a few screenshots of the email that he received from Twitter. In the email, Twitter notified Shyam that Tripura police asked them to suspend his account for his tweet. However, Twitter did not take any action on this because they believe in defending and respecting the voice of its users.
Shyam also wrote on Twitter that he received a mail from Twitter at 2 am. They said ‘Tripura gov. has asked Twitter to take action on his account but they refused to do so. Because Twitter strongly believes in defending and respecting the voice of its users.’