Distorted India Map Row: Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari Booked In UP's Bulandshahr

Twitter India Managing Director Manish Maheshwari has been booked under Section 505 (2) of IPC and Section 74 of IT (Amendment) Act 2008, on complaint of a Bajrang Dal leader in Bulandshahr.

Twitter India Managing Director Manish Maheshwari

Bulandshahr, UP: Uttar Pradesh police has booked Twitter India Managing Director Manish Maheshwari for showing wrong map of India on its website. Maheshwari has been booked under Section 505 (2) of IPC and Section 74 of IT (Amendment) Act 2008, on complaint of a Bajrang Dal leader in Bulandshahr. 

The development came hours after Twitter came under fire for displaying a distorted map of India on the career section on its website. The map that appeared on the ‘Tweep Life’ section showed Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh detached from India. Upon receiving heavy criticism over the same, the social media giant on Monday evening removed the distorted map of India from its website. 

Notably, this is the second FIR against Manish this month. Earlier, he was booked by the police in connection with Ghaziabad assault case. 

This is not the first time that the social media platform showed the wrong map of India. In November 2020, national security analyst Nitin A Gokhale found that Twitter had labelled the Indian territory of Leh in Ladakh as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Gokhale, the founder of Strat News Global, had marked his location as ‘Hall of Fame Leh’. However, the microblogging platform displayed the area as a part of PRC. The screengrab of the video read, “Nitin A Gokhale was live. Jammu and Kashmir, People’s Republic of China.”

The government of India issued a warning to CEO Jack Dorsey over the misrepresentation of the Indian map and later Twitter India issued an apology and removed the images and related tweets.