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Twitter India Officials Booked After Site Showed Distorted Map of Country Without Kashmir

On 16 June, Twitter lost its legal protection in India because it refused to comply with the digital rules India announced in February. Hours after losing its legal shield, Twitter was named in its first police complaint for inciting unrest in Ghaziabad city in the state of Uttar Pradesh by allowing a video of a Muslim man being beaten to go viral.
Sputnik

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.

​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 Loses 'Legal Shield' in India, Gets Booked for 'Fuelling' Hindu-Muslim Feud in Uttar Pradesh
​Last week, Maheshwari was supposed to appear before the Ghaziabad police for questioning. The case concerns Twitter's alleged involvement in inciting unrest between Hindus and Muslims. A video went viral on Twitter showing an elderly Muslim man being beaten in Ghaziabad that led to clashes between the two religious groups.

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.

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