Now, FIR against Twitter after child rights body raises the child-pornography bogey

The Delhi Police’s Cyber Cell has registered a case against Twitter Inc for allegedly having child pornographic and sexual abuse content on their platform.

A spokesperson for Delhi police, Chinmoy Biswal said this was done after a formal complaint from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR).

The Cyber Crime Cell of Delhi Police has initiated action, and a case has been registered under provisions for protecting the Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, IPC Act, and IT Act.

The NCPCR officials said on a general probe they found at least 31 websites on the dark web with “highly obscene content”.

“Such material was also found to be available on Twitter where many links are within the reach of users, and they can get such material through different handles,” the complaint said, according to police.

It was also stated that “Twitter does not report such cases to the authorities in India, which is mandatory as per the POCSO Act.”

In a statement, Twitter, however, said it has “a zero-tolerance” policy towards child sexual exploitation and “we have a proactive approach in combating sexual exploitation of minors on our service.”

“We will continue to invest in proactive detection and removal of content that violates the Twitter Rules and work with law enforcement and NGO partners in India to tackle the issue,” Twitter said in a statement.

“We have been at the forefront of responding to the growing challenge of preventing the exploitation of children on the Internet and will continue to aggressively fight online child sexual abuse, as well as invest in the technology and tools that are essential to stay ahead of this issue.”

In 2019, Twitter launched a feature in search prompt that is aimed at deterrence of child sexual exploitation (CSE), Twitter officials say.

There are multiple cases now filed against Twitter India by various state governments.

There is a ‘fake video’ case in UP and two cases in Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir on displaying of Indian map ‘without showing’ Jammu and Kashmir as its integral parts.

However, later on, the posting on the map was deleted by Twitter authorities.

The Uttar Pradesh Police (from Ghaziabad) had issued a notice to Twitter India MD, Manish Maheshwari on June 17 to report at Loni Border police station within seven days of receiving the notice to get his statement recorded.

The case relates to a complaint related to tweets on the assault of an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad. It has been termed as a ‘fake video’ case.

Police in Ghaziabad said the assault on the Muslim man was a personal dispute but was painted as a Hindu-Muslim communal incident on Twitter.

The Karnataka High Court has granted interim relief to Maheshwari, stating that while his statement can be recorded, virtually and no coercive action should be taken against him.

The UP police have moved the Supreme Court of India against the Karnataka High Court order. Maheshwari has also filed a caveat in the Supreme Court asking that he be heard before any orders are passed in any appeal filed by the Uttar Pradesh Police.

As there is no let-up in the battle of wits between Twitter and the authorities in India, a parliamentary standing committee on IT chaired by opposition Congress lawmaker Shashi Tharoor has sought an explanation from the microblogging platform on why the Twitter accounts of the Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and committee chairperson Shashi Tharoor were blocked by it.

The ruling BJP members have also reportedly questioned the ‘credibility/ of Twitter fact-checkers stating that they were mostly biased against the Modi government.

The Union IT Minister criticized Twitter, saying its “actions show they are not the harbinger of free speech that they claim to be but are only interested in running their agenda.”

Congress MP Tharoor said that he had also faced a similar issue with Twitter in the past.

The government has earlier flayed Twitter for deliberate defiance and failure to comply with IT rules in the country.