June 30 (UPI) — Indian police filed a report Tuesday against two Twitter India executives over a Kashmir map error.
Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district lodged the First Information Report, prepared as the first document in criminal proceedings, against Twitter’s Managing Director Manish Maheshwari and News Partnerships Head Amitra Tripathi Tuesday, Indian Express reported.
Maheshwari and Tripathti have been booked based on criminal charges of public mischief and publication for fraudulent purpose, according to the English-language Indian daily newspaper. Based on a Bajrang Dal office-bearer’s complaint Monday evening about the world map in “Tweep Life” global careers section, the case was registered at Khurja Nagar’s police station.
The FIR report called the erroneous depiction of the Indian region of Kashmir as a separate country “an act of treason,” amid ongoing tension surrounding Kashmir’s fight for independence from India for decades, The Guardian reported.
Twitter removed the world map from its “Tweep Life” after the backlash, according to Indian Express and The Guardian.
“The world map does not show Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir as parts of India,” Bajrang Dal’s western Uttar Pradesh convenor Praveen Bhati said in the complaint, according to news agency PTI, Indian Express reported. “This is not a coincidence. This act has hurt the sentiments of Indians, including me.”
Though Twitter did not comment directly on the incident, its Global Public Policy Team said in a statement last month it was “concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and potential threat to freedom of expression.”
