Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari to appear before Ghaziabad Police on June 24

New Delhi: Twitter India Managing Director Manish Maheshwari has been summoned by Uttar Pradesh Police for questioning on Thursday (June 23) over tweets on the assault of an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad. Maheshwari will appear before the Ghaziabad Police at 10:30 on Thursday.

In a second notice sent to Twitter India MD Maneesh Maheshwari, Ghaziabad Senior Superintendent of Police Amit Pathak warned him that his failure may result in his prosecution for hindering the probe. The new notice to the Twitter India MD was sent on June 21 evening after Maheshwari offered to join the investigation through video conference, a senior police officer said.

Twitter has drawn flak for failure to fully comply with the new IT rules, which mandates among other requirements, the appointment of three key personnel - chief compliance officer, nodal officer and grievance officer by social media platforms with over 50 lakh users. All the three personnel have to be resident in India. 

While the rules came into effect on May 26, Twitter is yet to adhere to the social media guidelines, despite repeated reminders from the government. The government, last week, had slammed Twitter for deliberate defiance and failure to comply with the IT rules, which has led to the US giant losing its intermediary status in India and becoming liable for users posting any unlawful content.

Twitter and the government have been at loggerheads over multiple instances in the past months, including during the farmers' protest and later when the microblogging platform tagged political posts of several leaders of the ruling party BJP as "manipulated media", triggering a sharp rebuke from the Centre.

Twitter has an estimated 1.75 crore users in India, as per data cited by the government recently.

Earlier this month, Twitter had blocked accounts of Punjabi rapper JazzyB, Sydney-based hip-hop artist L-Fresh the Lion and two others following demands by the Indian government.

Earlier this year, more than 500 accounts were suspended and access to hundreds of others in India blocked after the government ordered the microblogging platform to restrain the spread of misinformation and inflammatory content related to farmers' protests.