JACK MA SUMMONED BY COURT
GURUGRAM: A district court in Gurugram has summoned Alibaba and its founder Jack Ma in a case where a former employee in India alleged he was fired after flagging what he saw as fake news on apps and platforms owned by the e-commerce giant.
NEW DELHI: A district court in Gurugram has summoned Alibaba and its founder Jack Ma in a case where a former employee in India alleged he was fired after flagging what he saw as fake news on apps and platforms owned by the Chinese e-commerce giant.
Pushpendra Singh Parmar, a resident of Ahmedabad and a former employee of Alibaba’s UC Web, filed a civil suit for wrongful termination against UC Web Mobile Private Limited on July 20. In the court filings, Parmar, 39, alleged the firm censored content seen as unfavourable to China and he was fired for flagits ging “fake news” that could cause “social and political turmoil”.
Civil judge Sonia Sheokand issued an order asking Alibaba, Ma, and about a dozen executives to appear before the court in person or through a lawyer at 10am on July 29 and also sought written responses from the company and executives within 30 days. HT has a copy of the July 20 order.
The case will be heard in the court of additional chief judicial magistrate Anil Kaushik on July 29. Atul Ahlawat, Parmar’s lawyer, said his client repeatedly wrote to his seniors about ”fake news” about false general elections, fake communal riots and non-existent India-Pakistan clashes. “There are many fake news published by Alibaba which attracted 13 crore [130 million] followers. These fake news generated lot of traffic on their application and their site had 1,550 sensitive content words which was in favour of China and anti-India news,” he said. The suit seeks damages of ~ 2 crore.