A top Facebook executive in India has lodged a lawsuit in New Delhi stating that she and the U.S. social network company have been receiving death threats following a news report that supposedly favored the ruling Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In their complaint to Delhi police, Ankhi Das, Facebook 's top government policy manager in India, reported that a few people had "intentionally vilified" her on the Internet because of their political affiliations and were engaging in abuse.
Das said the threats were followed up by a report last week which declared that they refused to apply Facebook's hate speech rules to a party member of PM Modi and other Hindu nationalists and groups internally flagged for promoting or engaged in violence.
It's extremely disturbing that I have had endless harassment, Das told the Indian Hindu newspaper in her complaint.
A Delhi police spokesperson failed to reply to Reuters' telephone and text messages.
Das and Facebook did not reply to the police complaint request for comment.
Monday's Facebook referred Reuters to a statement at a weekend which stated There's nothing more to do but admitted it forbade hate speech regardless of the political position.
The article in the WSJ triggered a political storm in India and raised questions about the practice of Facebook content regulation.
That said that it would damage the business prospects of the enterprise in the country by punishing the violations of politicians of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP, by PM Modi), the WSJ paper said.
The controversy comes months after Facebook's investment of $5.7 billion in the Indian digital unit of Reliance Industries, with more then 300 million users in India.
The firm has also received approval for the launch of a WhatsApp payment service, which is also the largest market in India, with over 400 million users.
Politicians trading barbs
The main Congress of India's opposition took advantage of the WSJ history to seek a parliamentary inquiry into the alleged relations of Facebook employees with BJP P.M. Modi.
On Sunday, on Twitter, Congress said, Millions of Indians are manipulated by Facebook, controlled and manipulated by BJP.
BJP legislators in turn accused Facebook of censoring nationalist voices and lawmaker Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore of being a "Left-Congress-leaning" platform in a column on Monday's Indian Express.
This tea storm is only a browsing exercise on Facebook to 'allow' certain views to exist, said Rathore.
There are examples of current and previous Facebook executives with links to the former government and opposition parties. Some also openly have criticized the prime minister.
Tejasvi Surya, another BJP legislator and an information technology parliamentary committee member, said many people complained about Facebook's unfair censorship of many nationalist, pro-Indian or pro-Hindu voices and about the fact that they would take up the issue with the competent authorities.
