The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has moved the Delhi High Court against the Twitter Inc’s refusal to remove a tweet published by Mohammed Zubair, co founder of the fact checking website Alt News co-founder. The tweet allegedly “threatened and tortured a minor girl”, Bar and Bench reported.
“That the Commission (NCPCR) in discharge of its statutory obligation, has been following up with Twitter Inc. with regard to the cognizance taken by it under Section 13(1)G) of the CPCR Act, 2005 against a complaint received regarding online threats and repeated incident of stalking of a minor girl on Twitter by the Petitioner,” the affidavit stated.
In a reply to an abusive message from a Twitter user named Jagdish Singh, Zubair had tweeted on August 6, 2020, the profile picture of the user where he had blurred the picture of a little girl who was his granddaughter and wrote, “Hello Jagdish Singh, Does your cute grand daughter know about your part time job of abusing people on social media? I suggest you to change your profile pic. He also shared a screenshot of the tweet thread where Singh had commented abusive words in one of Zubair’s fact-checked tweets.
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Following this, two First Information Reports were lodged against Zubair in Delhi and Raipur under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for allegedly “threatening and torturing a minor girl” on Twitter based on a complaint filed by the NCPCR Chairperson Priyank Kanoongo.
Seeking action against Zubair for “threatening and stalking the minor girl on Twitter”, the NCPCR had also written to the Deputy Commissioner of the Delhi Police along with the nodal cyber cell officer based on the complaint which was initially from an organisation called Forum for Indigenous Rights – North-East India.
Besides the aforementioned, two other Twitter accounts whose usernames are de_real_mask and syedsarwar20 were also responsible, as per the FIR, since they had also commented on the post. These two profiles have been permanently suspended by Twitter for violating Twitter rules from August 25, 2020.
The NCPCR had also written to the Delhi Police seeking relevant information from Twitter Inc regarding the actions taken by them against Zubair.
“Twitter had, by way of its reply dated 25.08.2020, informed the Commission that two tweets referred to it; specifically two comments on the post (the links appear below), were no longer available for access on the Twitter platform. Your suggestion that this reported content is still available leaves us somewhat perplexed. We have since checked and we wish to re-confirm that the said content is not available (and screenshots are enclosed),” replied Twitter Inc after the NCPCR followed up with the Delhi Police on the matter this year again.
Meanwhile, Alt News co-founder Pratik Sinha tweeted that the website stands with Zubair.
“An attempt is being made to hound co-founder of Alt News, Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) through misuse of legal apparatus. Alt New stands by Mohammed Zubair. Zubair has been in the forefront of fighting fake narratives, and his work hurts those who have weaponised misinformation to subvert the Indian democracy,” the tweet read.