David Bridges
Mumbai: The Cybercrime police have registered a case based on a complaint lodged by Yuva Sena secretary – Kiran Sali – against a Twitter user for allegedly calling Chief Minister Eknath Shinde “Gaddar” or traitor, and further abusing him. The account has been suspended.
According to the police, Sali, while surfing Twitter on October 11 noticed a tweet posted by a Twitter handle “bhujangashetti.” The user had written the word “Gaddar” (traitor) in a reply to a post by Shinde.
The Twitter user had further abused the chief minister.
“After seeing this, Sali approached us and we have registered a case in the matter. A case has been registered against the user under section 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 500 (punishment for defamation) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC),” said a police officer from Cyber Cell police.
The police said the acts of the user are to defame and insult the Chief Minister on a public platform and the user has also similarly abused a female anchor associated with a Hindi television channel. Those tweets were also produced by Sali and given to the police as evidence.
“We have registered the offence and taken steps to identify the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the user to nab him,” said the police officer.
Sophie Langley
Mason Thompson
