The Delhi High Court asked Twitter to remove certain objectionable content related to the Hindu Goddess Maa Kali from its platform, observing that the social media giant must respect the sentiments of the general public as it is them the media house procure their business from. The petition regarding this was submitted by Aditya Singh Deshwal, according to him, he came across a few highly offensive and obnoxious posts regarding Maa Kaali put up by a username @AtheistRepublic . In that post, the deity was represented in a disgraceful manner.
The bench said Twitter was doing a good job and people were happy with it. “Things are going to be removed or not,” the court asked the counsel for Twitter. A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh said, “You should respect the sentiments of the general public as you are doing business for the public at large. Their sentiments shall be given due importance. Why you should do things like this. You should remove this,”
“You remove it. You have done it in Rahul Gandhi’s case also,” the bench added.
The petitioner was represented through senior advocate Sanjay Poddar, who said he intimated to the grievance officer of Twitter that the substance put by the client was in grave negation of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 and resistance with the rules can cause Twitter to lose its legal immunity provided under the Information Technology Act
He asserted that Twitter claimed that the content under question is not of a category in which it takes action and hence it cant be removed.
The plea hopes for a direction to Twitter to eliminate the questionable content from its site and for all time suspend the concerned utilized record.