Published 17:10 IST, August 18th 2020
FIR filed against Facebook India's Director Ankhi Das for ‘hurting religious sentiments’
The FIR has been lodged by a local journalist named Awesh Tiwari in Chhattisgarh naming Ankhi Das and two others for allowing hate-speech posts on Facebook
Following up on the massive row over Facebook's hate-speech policy in India, based on the claims of a foreign media publication, an FIR has been filed against Ankhi Das, Facebook's Director for Public Policy in India for allegedly 'hurting religious sentiments'.
The FIR has been lodged by a local journalist named Awesh Tiwari in Chhattisgarh naming Das and two others for allowing hate-speech posts on the social networking site by select political parties and groups. It is important however to mention that the journalist's FIR comes a day after Ankhi Das filed a complaint with the Delhi's Cyber Cell Unit naming five people for issuing death threats to her. Awesh Tiwari is one of the people mentioned in her complaint.
According to sources, the Public Policy Director for India, South and Central Asia has been receiving a flood of abusive comments and threats after a western media outlet claimed that Ankhi Das had allegedly told Facebook that punishing hate-speech violations by BJP on the social networking site would 'damage the company's business prospects in India'.
Ankhi Das along with Ram Sahu and Vivek Sinha have been booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 295(a) (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings), 505(1)(c) (with intent to incite, or which is likely to incite, any class or community of persons to commit offence against any other class or community), 506 (criminal intimidation), 500 (defamation) and 34 (common intention), according to news agency PTI.
What does the article claim?
An American newspaper on August 14 claimed that BJP's Telangana MLA T Raja Singh had often made communal and incendiary speeches that were posted on Facebook, clashing with the company's hate speech rules. The report claims that inspite of the posts allegedly violating Facebook's hate-speech rules and qualifying as dangerous, Facebook was not to keen on flagging them under its hate-speech policy owing to the company's business prospects in India. Citing preferential treatment by Facebook, WSJ points to the removal of thousands of Congress-linked Pakistan military posts and several BJP-linked fake news pages prior to the Lok Sabha elections. The report further points out that Facebook has faced issues with the launch of its telecommunications service - Free Basics in 2016 from the Modi government, as it violated net neutrality.
Updated 17:10 IST, August 18th 2020