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IN THE HIGH COURT OF KARNATAKA AT BENGALURU

DATED THIS THE 23^RD DAY OF JULY, 2021

BEFORE

THE HON’BLE Mr. JUSTICE G. NARENDAR

WRIT PETITION No. 11028/2021 (GM-POLICE)

BETWEEN :

Manish Maheshwari

Son of Mr. Mali Ram

Maheshwari

Aged about 44 years

Residing at 1011

Prestige White Meadows

Next to Whitefield Police Station

Whitefield, Next to hope farm

Whitefield

Bengaluru – 560 066.

… Petitioner

(By Sri. C.V. Nagesh, Sr. Adv., for

Sri. Mrinal Shankar, Vishwas N., Manu Kulkarni, Advs.)

AND :

State of Uttar Pradesh

Through Loni Border

Police Station

Loni Road, Johripur

Ghaziabad, UP – 201102.

… Respondent

(By Sri. P. Prasanna Kumar, Adv.)

This Writ Petition is filed under Articles 226 and 227 of

the Constitution of India with a prayer to quash the Notice

dated 21.06.2021 vide Annexure-A issued by the respondent

under Section 41-A of Cr.P.C. and etc.

This Writ Petition coming on for Orders this day, the

Court made the following:

R

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O R D E R

Heard the learned Senior counsel Sri. C.V. Nagesh

along with Sri. Mrinal Shankar, Sri. Vishwas N. and Sri.

Manu Kulkarni, learned counsel for the petitioner and

learned

counsel

Sri.

Prasanna

Kumar

P,

for

the

respondent.

2.

Brief facts are that the petitioner is an

employee

of

Twitter

Communications

India

Private

Limited (for short TCIPL) and that he is the revenue head

in-charge of advertising and sales. He being a senior

employee of the company TCIPL, a public designation of

Managing Director is provided to the petitioner but he has

not been appointed as the Managing Director in terms of

Section 2(54) of the Companies Act. Therefore the

petitioner has never been and is not a member of the

Board of Directors of TCIPL. That the said fact is borne

out by the Company Master Data maintained by the

Authority and which fact is made available publicly on the

website of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, a copy of

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which is produced as Annexure-C. A bare perusal of

Annexure-C would reveal that the petitioner is not one of

the Directors amongst the three named in the master

data. It is also relevant to note that the address of the

registered office of TCIPL is described as C-20, G Block,

Near MCA Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra (E), Mumbai,

Mumbai City, Maharashtra – 400 051, India and the

address of the other office, where all or any books of

accounts and papers are maintained is described as Unit

No. 101, First Floor, Tower `B’, RMZ Infinity, Old Madras

Road, Benniganahalli, Bengaluru – 560 016, Karnataka,

India.

The

e-mail

ID

in

the

master

data

is

akapoor@twitter.com. The date of incorporation is shown

as 20.02.2013. The petitioner is discharging his duties as

an employee of TCIPL at the registered office at

Bengaluru and is also residing at Bengaluru in the address

detailed in the cause title.

3.

The circumstances compelling the petitioner to

approach this Court are as under:

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A

complaint

came

to

be

registered

on

15.06.2021 at 23.20 hours on the information

furnished by one Sri. Naresh Singh, Sub-Inspector,

Thana Loni Border, Ghaziabad, U.P., India. In the

said complaint 9 accused were named and action

was sought against the accused on the ground that

they are responsible for the transmission and

further transmission of certain tweets and video.

The allegation, in sum and substance, against

accused Nos. 8 and 9 is that they failed to stop the

transmission by removing the tweets despite being

made aware that the incident on which the tweets

are based is a false news and that false news should

not be propagated. The background of the incident

that led to the complaint and tweet is that there was

an incident of an aged person by name Sri. Abdul

Samad Saifi who was beaten and his beard was

forcibly chopped off. The physical occurrence of the

incident was videographed an