New Delhi: The Delhi Police Crime Branch has registered an FIR over fraudulent notices asking X to block the accounts of the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) and the Software Freedom Law Centre, India (SFLC.in) over alleged defamation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
This comes days after X informed the Delhi High Court that the takedown notices were sent by “some impostor, and not by Delhi Police”. The micro-blogging platform had earlier issued notices to IFF and SFLC stating that a communication undersigned by Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwal, Special Commissioner Crime, had sought the takedown.
The FIR over the fake notices was lodged against unknown persons Saturday, under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) that deal with forgery and impersonation of public servants, and the IT Act, a Delhi Police officer confirmed on condition of anonymity.
The two digital rights organisations had challenged the purported takedown requests in the Delhi High Court. During the 6 November hearing, the social media platform’s counsel told the court that an internal investigation had found that someone had impersonated the Delhi Police.
“The internal investigation has established that the notices were not genuine police communications and had been sent by an imposter,” X’s counsel said. The platform also told the court that it had not acted on the requests and would not take down the organisations’ accounts.
The notices forwarded by X alleged that the posts of both the organisation were “defamatory” towards the RSS under Section 356 (defamation) of the BNS. The takedown request allegedly called for the content to be removed or withheld within three hours, citing provisions of the Information Technology Act and the IT Rules, 2021.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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