The Delhi High Court on Friday asked Twitter to remove certain objectionable tweets relating to Hindu Goddess from its platform, observing that the social media giant should respect sentiments of general public as it was doing business for them.
A bench of Chief Justice DN. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh said, “You should respect the sentiments of general public as you are doing business for public at large. Their sentiments shall be given due importance...Why you should do things like this. You should remove this”.
Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra, representing Twitter, said it will remove the post once the high court giving an order in this regard. The high court has posted the case for further hearing on November 30.
Advocate Aditya Singh Deshwal said he came across some highly obnoxious posts on Twitter about Hindu Goddess Maa Kaali put up by a user with the name @AtheistRepublic and the deity was represented in a disgraceful and outrageous manner.
“The said objectionable posts has shook the collective conscience of the followers and practitioners of Hinduism,” the plea said.
“It would not be out pf place to mention here that the said twitter user @AtheistRepulic has put filthy and degrading content about every religion, let alone Hinduism. The said posts have the potential to disturb the tranquility of the society,” it added.
The petition stated that the Twitter account of user @AtheistRepublic has more than 10 lakh followers.
The petitioner said he intimated the grievance officer of Twitter that the content put by the used was in grave contravention of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 and non-compliance of the rules shall make Twitter lose its legal immunity provided under the Information Technology Act.
He claimed that Twitter repudiated that the content in the account is not of a category for which it takes action and therefore, it cannot be removed.
The plea sought direction to Twitter to remove the objectionable content from its platform and also permanently suspend the concerned used account.
