After a Hyderabad-based activist, in a tweet, flagged an alleged hateful video on Twitter, the social media platform informed the activist that it had received a legal notice from the Hyderabad City Police which considered his tweet as being "against the Information Technology Act". On September 1, Masood had raised an objection to a video posted by Twitter user @UshaNirmala, which alleged that a particular community was 'creating a monopoly' in the fruit-vegetable market. In his tweet, wherein he tagged the commissioner of Hyderabad City Police Anjani Kumar and Collector of Hyderabad, Masood requested the police to take action against the person for sharing 'misleading, false and objectionable video messages' under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Information Technology Act. https://twitter.com/SQMasood/status/1433026801563959308 A month later, Masood was in for a shock when he was told by Twitter that the Cyber Crimes Station of the Hyderabad City Police had instead found his tweet to be in violation of the IT Act. The notice sent by Twitter to Masood, reviewed by MediaNama, said, "In the interest of transparency, we are writing to inform you that Twitter has received a request from Cyber Crime Police Station, Detective Department, Central Crime Station, Hyderabad regarding your Twitter account, @SQMasood, that claims the following content violates India’s Information Technology Act." However, Twitter said it had not taken any action based on the Hyderabad City Police's request. https://twitter.com/SQMasood/status/1443474563195564032 This is arbitrary, and misuse of the IT Act provisions by the Hyderabad police against the complainant. It…
