Supreme Court issues notice to Twitter India's former Managing Director

The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice to Twitter's former India MD Manish Maheshwari on an appeal filed by Uttar Pradesh police against a Karnataka High Court order protecting him from being questioned in connection with a viral video that allegedly showed an old Muslim man being harassed over his religion.

A three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India NV Ramana said it would examine the case and issued the notice after hearing Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Maheshwari, who was represented by senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi. The two other judges on the bench were Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli.

The Karnataka High Court had on July 23, 2021, granted Maheshwari interim protection from being questioned in the case in which Ghaziabad police had issued summons to several journalists and Congress leaders for tweeting the video. The HC had, however, allowed the cops to interact with him through video conferencing.


UP police had appealed against this order. SG Tushar Mehta told the court that the case involved the issue of whether the Karnataka High Court had the territorial jurisdiction to deal with the case since the incident had occurred in Ghaziabad. The bench agreed to examine the issue.

Maheshwari's counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the issue had already been settled in an earlier judgement, but left it to the bench to re-examine the issue.

Ghaziabad police said the video claimed to show an alleged campaign to harass Muslims even when it wasn't. Cops said the incident was a private dispute between the man and his clients.