Ghaziabad Police has received a response from Twitter officials, stating that they are ready to be available for questioning via video conferencing, according to Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Ghaziabad Amit Pathak, days after a legal notice was sent to Twitter India managing director Manish Maheshwari regarding the viral video of the assault on an elderly man in Loni.
However, the police are dissatisfied with the microblogging site's response and are considering sending a second notice.
Twitter has also requested that the Uttar Pradesh Police revise the notice they issued, according to Pathak.
The Uttar Pradesh Police issued a legal notice to Manish Maheshwari, the managing director of Twitter India, on Thursday(July ,15,2021),in connection with the viral video of an assault on an elderly man in Loni. After the microblogging site "let the anti-social messages go viral," the MD was asked to record his statement.
According to the legal notice, the managing director was summoned to the Police Station Loni Border within seven days to record a statement on the matter.
Meanwhile, Twitter's status as an intermediary platform in India has been revoked due to noncompliance with new IT regulations. According to sources, Twitter is the only mainstream social media platform that has not complied with the new laws.
Twitter will now be held directly editorially responsible for posts published on its platform, rather than just being considered a platform hosting content from various users.
The implication of this development is that if Twitter is charged with allegedly unlawful content, it will be treated as a publisher - not an intermediary - and will be liable for punishment under any law, including the IT Act, as well as the country's penal laws, according to sources.
On June 16, 2021, the UP Police filed a FIR against nine entities, including Twitter India, in connection with the Loni incident.
"There is no communal angle to the incident in Loni where a man was thrashed and his beard was chopped off," the police said in the FIR.Without checking the facts, the following entities — The Wire, Rana Ayyub, Mohammad Zubair, Dr Shama Mohammed, Saba Naqvi, Maskoor Usmani, Salman Nizami — began giving communal colour to the incident on Twitter and suddenly began spreading messages to disrupt the peace and bring differences between religious communities."
