In a relief to the Twitter India managing director Manish Maheshwari, the High Court of Karnataka on Friday quashed the notice issued by the Uttar Pradesh police seeking his personal presence in connection with a communally sensitive video uploaded on Twitter platform. The court said that the notice under 41A appeared mala fide.
The UP Police notice mandated the Twitter India chief to appear before them for an enquiry. The single bench of Justice G. Narendar maintained that if the UP Police needs to question Maheshwari, they can do so by visiting his office or home address or even virtually.
The Karnataka HC also said that the notice issued under Section 41A of the CrPC can be treated as issued under Section 160. The court said the notice issued to Maheshwari by the UP police was mala fide. “The notice under 41A appears mala fide,” it added.
Maintaining that the provisions of the statute under Section 41(A) CrPC should not be permitted to become «tools of harassment», Justice Narendar said that the respondent Ghaziabad police did not place any material which would demonstrate even the prima facie involvement of the petitioner though the hearing has been going on for the past several days.
“The action of the respondent (Ghaziabad police) trying to invoke section 41(A) of the CrPC give no doubt in the mind of court that the same has been resorted to as an arm-twisting method as the petitioner refused to heed to the notice under section 160 of the CrPC,” the court observed.
The Ghaziabad police had issued a notice under Section 41-A of the CrPC on 21 asking the Twitter MD to report at the Loni Border police station at 10:30 am on 24 June.
Maheshwari then approached the Karnataka High Court as he lives in Bengaluru in Karnataka.
On 24 June, the High Court, in an interim order, restrained the Ghaziabad police from initiating any coercive action against him.
The Ghaziabad Police on 15 June booked Twitter Inc, Twitter Communications India Pvt.Ltd. (Twitter India), news website The Wire, journalists Mohammed Zubair and Rana Ayyub, besides Congress leaders Salman Nizami, Maskoor Usmani, Shama Mohamed and writer Saba Naqvi.
They were booked over the circulation of a video in which an elderly man, Abdul Shamad Saifi, alleges he was thrashed by some young men who also asked him to chant ‹Jai Shri Ram› on 5 June.
According to police, the video was shared to cause communal unrest.