Hyderabad Police Book Twitter, Whatsapp And Tiktok For Damaging Nation Integration.

The Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police has registered India-based heads of Twitter, WhatsApp and TikTok on a complaint that alleged that they were allowing people to upload and post messages and videos on anti-CAA on their platforms; that is against “Nation and Religion”.

The case was registered following directions from the XII Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at Hyderabad.

The case was filed on the basis of a complaint from a 42-year-old journalist S Srishailam, following the Telangana High Court issued directives to register the case.

In his complaint, Srisailam accuses the Indian divisions of these three social media firms of intentionally circulating “objectionable video and word content” over their platforms, causing “damage to the Nation integration and communal harmony” for personal gains. He said, “some anti-social elements under the guise of freedom of expression started a social media campaign against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019, merging it with the proposed National Registry of Citizens (NRC) across the country”.

Srishailam also claimed he had filed a complaint with the Hyderabad police commissioner on December 21, 2019, but got no positive response.

The complainant claims that these anti-social elements are circulating the content without verifying the content and goes on to accuse these firms of “waging war against India through propaganda to create disharmony, hearted feelings of enmity, and ill will among Indian citizens”.

Accusing WhatsApp of allowing to groups that are against CAA to thrive on their platform, the complainant has also attached the phone numbers of 26 such Whatsapp group.

On February 18, the Cyber Crime branch of Hyderabad police Central Crime Station (CCS) registered a case under sections 121A, 153A(Promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc), 294, 295A, 505, 120B of IPC r/w 156(3) CrPC.

Complaints were lodged against WhatsAppInc, Twitter Communications India Private Limited, TikTok, and the case is being investigated.