Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair says Tamil Nadu Cyber Crime Police flagged his tweets

Sharing a mail from Twitter Support, he says site was told his tweets had violated provisions of India’s IT Act

Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair tweeted on November 4 that he had received a communique from Twitter informing them that the Cyber Crime Police of Tamil Nadu had flagged some content that he had posted, claiming it violated provisions of India’s IT Act.

According to Mr. Zubair, a few right-wing activists in north India had tweeted a video of a “Muslim clergyman drugging a Hindu woman and caught red-handed by Hindu activists” in September. He did a fact-check and said it was a scripted video. Social media commentator based in Tamil Nadu, Kishore K. Swami, too had tweeted the video.  

Sharing a mail from Twitter Support, Mr. Zubair said on his handle, “They (Twitter) have received a request from Cyber Crime Police, Tamil Nadu regarding my Twitter thread, they claim that my fact check tweets violates India’s Information & Technology Act, 2000.” The mail mentioned URLs of some tweets of Mr. Zubair and stated, “We have not taken any action on the reported content at this time as a result of this request. It is our policy to notify our users if we receive a legal request from an authorised entity (such as law enforcement or a government agency) to remove the content from their account.”

Meanwhile, the Cyber Crime Wing of Tamil Nadu Police or Cyber Crime Wing of Chennai Police did not confirm that such a request was made. 

“It is my job to do fact-checking,” Mr. Zubair told The Hindu. “What I had done was take screenshots of people who spread fake news or misleading content. I had just put out four or five tweets. I have only mentioned people with verified handles - most are probably from north India - social media influencers who tweeted the video. I quoted their tweets, and called them out for this misrepresentation and for misleading people by giving communal colour to the act. A small part of the video had the disclaimer which said it is just for fun. Everyone ignored it, I was just pointing that out.”

Meanwhile, State Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan tweeted in response to Mr. Zubair: “It is my understanding that a broad request against the content was made, and not any unique request against your specific account. The screen covered all original posts and re-posts, including it appears, your fact-checking posts. A clarifying statement may be forthcoming.”