Twitter accounts of govt critics, activists among social media profiles targetted by Tripura Police

The crackdown by the Tripura Police, which invoked the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and sections of the Indian Penal Code, targeted critics of the BJP and its leaders, and even lawyers who called for action and a probe into alleged attacks on the minority community. And now, two weeks after police asked Twitter to block 68 handles and provide user details, 24 profiles have been taken down while 57 tweets are no longer available, including 23 “withheld in India in response to a legal demand”….

Many among these handles have been critical of the BJP, its leaders and their ideology. A scrutiny of the handles showed that 9 users identified themselves as journalists, 7 as political workers, 5 as students, 2 as activists while 7 were affiliated to religious organisations. Several profiles did not have any personal description….

This apart, four lawyers who came to Tripura as a fact-finding team under the aegis of Lawyers for Democracy were also booked on November 3 after they claimed that people from the minority community had been targeted at Panisagar in North Tripura. They called for police action and a judicial probe. Notices were served to the four lawyers – Ehtesham Hashmi, Supreme Court lawyer, Amit Srivastav, Coordinator of Lawyers for Democracy, NCHRO national secretary Ansar Indori and PUCL member Mukesh Kumar – with police invoking IPC sections and the UAPA to book them over statements “promoting enmity between religious groups” and “provoking the people of different religious communities to cause breach of peace”….

The article originally appeared in The Indian Express.