Facebook executive Ankhi Das has alleged online threats in a police complaint filed in the national capital. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that Das, public policy director who oversaw operations in India, had blocked action against leaders associated with the BJP and other Hindutva groups. Das reportedly had a role of overseeing "a team that decides what content is allowed on the platform".
Seeking police protection, she wrote in the complaint: "I am under constant fear and threat, especially being a woman. The perpetrators are deliberately operating through online accounts to hide their identity and to further spread misinformation and incite violence against me to meet their agenda," NDTV reported.
"The above threats are in relation to an article dated 14 August 2020 published in Wall Street Journal and further published in a mischaracterised and distorted manner in India by various publications and further widely circulated on social media," she said.
The publication had reported that Facebook employees had flagged inflammatory posts by T. Raja Singh. Raja Singh, a BJP MLA in Telangana, is no stranger to provocative speeches. "T. Raja Singh has said Rohingya Muslim immigrants should be shot, called Muslims traitors and threatened to raze mosques. By March of this year, they concluded Mr. Singh not only had violated the company’s hate-speech rules but qualified as dangerous, a designation that takes into account a person’s off-platform activities, according to current and former Facebook employees," the publication wrote.
However, Ankhi Das "opposed applying the hate-speech rules to Mr. Singh and at least three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groups flagged internally for promoting or participating in violence", according to the report. Das reportedly told Facebook staff that punishing violations by BJP members "would damage the company’s business prospects in the country."
Seizing on the report, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi accused the BJP and RSS of spreading "fake news" using Facebook and WhatsApp to influence the electorate.