The managing director of Twitter India, Manish Maheshwari, and Amrita Tripathi, the head of global content partnerships, have been the subject of a First Information Report by the police after the microblogging site showed a distorted map of India.
Both Maheshwari and Tripathi have been booked under two sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including section 505(2) which concerns "statements conducing to public mischief", and section 74 of the IT (Amendment) Act, 2008 which puts the burden of responsibility on the platform which hosted the content.
Copy of the FIR filed against #Twitter in #Bulandshahar for showing distorted map of India last Friday. pic.twitter.com/b23N0s2c43
— Radhika Parashar (@_RadhikaReports) June 29, 2021
Last week, under the headline "Tweep Life" on Twitter's careers section, a world map showed the Indian regions of Jammu & Kashmir as a separate country and the region of Ladakh as part of China.
After displaying the wrong map for the second time on 25 June and facing a severe backlash, Twitter got rid of the offending image on 28 June but by then a complaint against it had been filed in Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh state by a lawyer, Praveen Bhati. In recent days, #BanTwitter has been trending in India.
Twitter website shows Jammu Kashmir and ladakh as separate country. Second time twitter has show wrong India map #TwitterBan #TwitterBan pic.twitter.com/MYqLFGDSyq
— (रास्ट्रवादी) #Sonu Sharma (@SonuSha71918534) June 28, 2021
However, Maheshwari skipped his appearance before the police and filed an appeal to the Karnataka high court in connection with the investigation into the Ghaziabad assault case, which he was granted.
Police officials in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday approached the Supreme Court to challenge Karnataka's High Court order giving Maheshwari temporary protection from arrest in the same assault case.
