UP Police restrained from action against Twitter India head

The Karnataka High Court on Thursday restrained the Uttar Pradesh police from taking coercive action against Manish Maheshwari, country head of Twitter India.

Maheshwari was asked by the Uttar Pradesh Police to appear before Loni Border Police Station in relation to an investigation. The case relates to an ongoing complaint related to tweets on the assault of an elderly man in Ghaziabad.

“There will be an interim order restraining the respondents from initiating any coercive action against the petitioner”, the single judge bench said in an order on Thursday. It further said if the police wished to examine the petitioner, they may do so in the virtual mode.

The next hearing date has been set for June 29.

Twitter on Monday restricted tweets showing video and images from the viral video, according to a filing with the Lumen Database by the microblogging platform.

The tweets are withheld for users in India.

Ghaziabad Police said the assault on the man was a personal dispute but was being painted as a communal issue on Twitter.

Some media platforms and journalists were also named in the complaint.

Maheshwari, who is based in Bengaluru, had been summoned last week for questioning by the UP Police. He had made himself available on video call, but the UP Police summoned him to appear physically at the Loni Border station.

The lawyer appearing for Maheshwari cited the case of journalist Vinod Dua, where another High Court had allowed investigation through video conferencing.