Twitter claimed the particular tweet of Gujarat BJP violated its rules. The post depicted the sentencing of terrorists in the Ahmedabad blast case.
The microblogging platform Twitter on Sunday (February 20) pulled down a tweet by the Gujarat Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claiming it violated Twitter rules. The particular tweet had a poster depicting the conviction of terrorists in the 2008 Ahmedabad blast case.
A special court in Ahmedabad sentenced 38 terrorists to death and 11 terrorists to life imprisonment in the 2008 Ahmedabad blast case on Friday (February 18). 56 people were killed, and over 200 were injured in the 2008 serial blasts. On July 26, 2008, there were 21 blasts in 70 minutes in Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind President, All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) Vice-President and Darul Uloom Deoband Principal Maulana Sayyid Arshad Madani, commonly known as Arshad Madani, had announced Friday (February 18) that he would challenge the conviction of 49 terrorists in the case.
On February 8, special judge A R Patel had found 49 terrorists guilty. 38 accused were freed for lack of evidence. The quantum of sentence was announced on February 18.
Referring to the conviction in this particular case, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was Gujarat chief minister in 2008, said in a public rally in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday (February 20) that he made a promise to himself that he would ensure those responsible for the blasts are punished.
The special court also imposed a fine of INR 2.85 lakh on each 48 convicts and INR 2.88 lakh on one convict.
Some of the convicted terrorists are convicts in other terror cases too. Safdar Nagori, general secretary of the banned terrorist organization Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), was sentenced to life imprisonment by a CBI court in Indore in 2017 for terror activities. Terrorists Saif-ur-Rehman and Mohammad Saif have been awarded the death penalty for the 2008 Jaipur serial blast case.
While Gujarat BJP’s tweet depicting the conviction of terrorists has been pulled down, there is no action about tweets from verified handles openly calling for violence and murder.
This glaring bias of the social media platform has not gone unnoticed. Many netizens expressed anger about this bias by Twitter.
In January last year, Twitter has refused to comply with the Union government’s order asking it to pull down tweets spreading fake news about farmers’ protests. The government withdrew the intermediary status for the platform for not complying with the amended IT rules in the country.
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