NEW DELHI: Twitter on Wednesday told the Delhi supreme court that it’s temporarily locked the account of Congress member Rahul Gandhi and removed a post where he shared the photograph of the oldsters of a nine-year-old Dalit girl who was allegedly raped and murdered in southwest Delhi.
The microblogging site said that the tweet has been removed because it was found to be in violation of the platform’s policy. “The account has been locked and therefore the tweet isn’t available,” advocate Sajan Poovayya said, in response to a petition seeking registration of FIR against Gandhi for allegedly revealing the victim’s identity by posting a photograph together with her parents on Twitter.
A bench of judge DN Patel and justice Jyoti Singh expressed satisfaction with the “prompt” action taken by Twitter before the court’s intervention. It also refused to issue notice at this stage on plea filed by one Makarand Suresh Mhadlekar and asked the parties to “keep 1-2 pages of submissions ready” when it takes up the matter on September 27.
The HC took a dim view of the insistence of the petitioner’s counsel to demand Twitter file an affidavit as he disputed the platform’s stand. “If this is often the attitude, we aren’t issuing notice,” it said.