Farmers Movement Archive

Bombay HC to hear plea seeking suspension of Kangana's Twitter account

The Bombay high court will on Tuesday hear a petition seeking suspension of Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut's Twitter account for derogatory tweets and hate speech. The petition was filed in December last year by Mumbai-based advocate Kashif Ali Khan Deshmukh.The lawyer also included Twitter as a party in his petition and sought directions to the microblogging site to suspend Ranuat's account. It also sought directions to Twitter to bar other social media accounts that spread hatred on its platform.Deshmukh also referred to Ranaut's sister Rangoli Chandel's tweets in the petition where she allegedly suggested genocide of persons belonging to a minority community through her tweet. Khan stated that after Chandel's account was suspended, Ranaut came out in support of her sister through a video wherein she reiterated what Chandel had tweeted.A complaint has already been lodged with Amboli police regarding the video, but no action was taken by the police against the actor, Khan also stated in his petition.The petitioner also highlighted a recent tweet in which the actor has called farmers "terrorists" who are protesting at the Delhi border against the farm laws.Over the last few months, Kangana's tweets on farmers' protest and her colleagues in the film industry have generated controversies. In February, Twitter removed two of her tweets related to farmers' agitation after the social media site found it to be in violation of rules. "We have taken action on Tweets that were in violation of the Twitter Rules in line with our range of enforcement options," Twitter had said in an official statement.She also called Twitter 'China's puppet' following the removal of her tweets. Notably, Twitter is banned in China.Recently, Ranaut hinted at quitting Twitter which is a US-based company and said she might join the 'homegrown' app, Koo. Meanwhile, her sister Rangoli Chandel's account remains permanently suspended for promoting hate speech

Hindustan Times

09-03-2021

India