Delhi police have said a person can face action for retweets and he or she cannot wash their hands of by saying “I don’t know”.
Many social media users write in their Twitter handle profiles that “retweets are not endorsements”, but it is no longer considered safe in the light of the assertion by the Delhi police.
“If you endorse a view on social media, it becomes your view. Retweeting and saying I don’t know, doesn’t stand here. Responsibility is yours. Time does not matter, you only have to retweet and it becomes new. Police action was on the basis of when matter came to our cognisance,” the ANI news agency quoted Delhi police deputy commissioner K.P.S. Malhotra as saying.
His statement came close on the heels of the arrest of Mohammed Zubair, journalist and co-founder of fact-checking website AltNews. The police arrested him on Monday night after a Twitter handle alleged that a post by Zubair in 2018 was hurting religious sentiments.
Twitter user Amit Kumar asked “who decides what is objectionable or not”.
“This means police can arrest anyone based on the objectionable tweet/retweet if it does not suit the narrative of the ruling party. We are gradually moving from democracy to dictatorship,” he tweeted.
