A complaint has been lodged in Delhi against Twitter India managing director Manish Maheshwari, actress Swara Bhasker and others in connection with a social media video on the assault of an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad on June 5.

“We have received a complaint against Swara Bhasker, Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari and others at Tilak Marg police station. The matter is under inquiry,” a police officer said.

Sources said the complainant, advocate Amit Acharya, had urged the police to register an FIR against Maheshwari, Bhasker and the others under Sections 153 (provocation to cause riot), 153A (promoting enmity between religious groups), 295A (acts intended to insult religious beliefs), 505 (mischief) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

On Thursday evening, Bhasker retweeted some message in her support.

In his complaint, the police said, Acharya has alleged that Bhasker had tweeted the video on social media without verifying its authenticity and Maheshwari did not remove the “false” tweet or tag it as “manipulated media”.

On Tuesday, Uttar Pradesh police had registered an FIR against Twitter, several journalists and Congress leaders for posting on Twitter the video in which the elderly Muslim man alleged that four people had assaulted him, chopped off his beard and forced him to chant “Jai Shri Ram” in the Loni area of Ghaziabad.

Ghaziabad police have in their FIR accused the journalists and the Congress leaders of tweeting the video without verifying facts and “giving a communal colour” to the incident.

If the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh pursues the FIR with vigour, it is expected to become a test case, especially since there is no official word yet that Twitter has lost its protective cover under the revised IT rules from pesky lawsuits after its failure to comply with the new guidelines.

The clip showed the elderly man, identified as Abdul Samad, alleging that the attackers had offered him an auto ride, taken him to an isolated place, thrashed him and forced him to chant Jai Shri Ram. The police have denied any communal element.

Mamata on Twitter

Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted on Thursday on the Twitter controversy: “Very unfortunate. This is very unfortunate. They cannot control Twitter. That’s why they want to bulldoze Twitter. They cannot control me, so they want to bulldoze my government. They want to bulldoze my party. They cannot control some journalists, so they want to kill them. So that is their phenomenon.”

“One day, there will be an end. There will be an end of everything. I condemn this,” she added.