Twitter Suspends Over 550 Accounts After R-Day Violence in Delhi

A crowd looks on at Red Fort, a day after clashes between protesting farmers and the police.

(Photo: Mendra Dorjey/The Quint)

Following the mayhem on Republic Day during the farmers’ tractor rally against the BJP government’s three farm laws, social media platform Twitter has suspended over 550 accounts in connection with the violence on Tuesday, 26 January.

A spokesperson from Twitter informed ANI that the platform has labelled tweets which were found to be violating its “synthetic and manipulated media policy.”

The spokesperson said, "We have taken strong enforcement action to protect the conversation on the service from attempts to incite violence, abuse, and threats that could trigger the risk of offline harm by blocking certain terms that violate our rules for trends."

The platform informed of using a combination of technological and human review, to take action against the accounts that were spamming and found to be exploiting the platform for their ends.

"We are monitoring the situation closely and remain vigilant, and strongly encourage those on the service to report anything they believe is in violation of the rules," the spokesperson added, ANI reported.

The ‘Kisan Gantantra Parade’ in the national capital on Tuesday was supposed to be a peaceful show of strength by the farmers, however, clashes broke out in several parts of the capital, including Red Fort and ITO.

The Delhi Police has detained 200 people in connection with the violence, saying that they will be arrested soon. Over 300 policemen were injured on Tuesday, the force said, adding that 22 FIRs have been filed so far. A protesting farmer also died near the ITO metro station after his tractor overturned.

(With inputs from ANI)