Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde to take Twitter to court for suspending his account

More than a week after the microblogging website Twitter suspended the account of Supreme Court Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, he has received an email from it turning down his appeal to restore the same, prompting him to explore legal recourse.

When National Herald spoke to Hegde on October 31, he had confirmed that his account had indeed been suspended, and said he had filed an appeal against the decision by the popular social media platform.

On Tuesday, November 5, Hegde received a mail from Twitter stating that his account would not be restored.

Following this, Hegde told National Herald that it had been now decided to take Twitter to court. Asked under what provisions of law would he move court, he said: “My lawyers are looking at all that. We could go to court in India, and if required, international courts.”

Hegde’s account was suspended twice last week, once on Saturday, 26 October over his cover image of a German national, August Landmesser, refusing to enact the Nazi salute before Hitler.

Later, the account was restored, only to be suspended again on Monday, 27 October over a 2017 tweet — Hegde had quote-tweeted Kavita Krishnan, whose post shared a poem by Gorakh Pandey, ‘Usko Phaansi Do’ along with its English translation, ‘Hang Him’. This is what apparently caught Twitter’s algorithm — besides mass reporting of Hegde’s tweet.

Subsequently, Hegde had received a message from Twitter asking him to delete the tweet to have his account restored. But Hegde decided to appeal against the suspension, instead of obliging and deleting the tweet.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Twitter users have been protesting against the website’s decision to suspend Hegde’s account, demanding that the same be restored. A few of these are reproduced below:

Who fought in SC against lynching ? Who fights for endless victim of Foreigner Tribunal orders ? Who fought for Aarey? Who is fighting to get PMs degree released in public? Who fought for the autonomy of minority education commission? It was @sanjayuvacha

“Thousands of Sanghis abuse day and night, despite that most of the report done by Team BKJ to Twitter, comes back as no violation. And a sane patriotic voice of Senior Supreme Court Lawyer Sanjay ji has been throttled by targetted reporting from IT Cell goons.”

“This man is @sanjayuvacha, Senior Lawyer, Supreme Court. He remained voice of voiceless, defender of free speech. Can you stand for his rights today? Twitter suspended him, its not Sanjay's loss. Its we the People.”

What the hell @Twitter. You don't take any action against verified handles spreading fake news, extremist hindutva propaganda and communal riot inciting lies. And you suspended the handle that's never abusive, talks of human rights and is critical of govt!

I am glad to lend my support to the campaign to have @sanjayuvacha's account restored honorably.

@TwitterIndia has a responsibility to get @Twitter reinstate this account. You let hatred run amok on your platform but go after decent people. Shame!

Enough. This struggle will not be restricted to @twitter.I say let's occupy @TwitterIndia office.Unless they #restoreSanjayuvacha. I promised not to take to street but now let's. In court and on road.And not just for @sanjayuvacha but against #CasteistTwitter #IslamoPhobicTwitter