Google CEO booked by UP police for 'defamatory video'

NEW DELHI: Google CEO Sundar Pichai along with 17 others were booked in Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi over a video that allegedly defamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 6. But the name of the top official of the tech giant was later removed from the FIR, police said on Friday.

 

The FIR has been lodged under sections 500 (for defamation), 504 (for intentional insult in order to provoke breach of peace), 506 (criminal intimidation), and 120B (party to a criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 67 of the Information Technology (IT) Act for publishing or distributing obscene material.

 

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The FIR was filed after a complaint by a local resident who claimed that he got over 8,500 threat calls on his mobile phone after he objected to the video he first encountered in a WhatsApp group and later on YouTube, which has over 5 lakh views.

 

Reports suggests that besides Pichai, the other mentioned names in the FIR are: Sapna Bodh, Chandan Kumar, Sanjay Kumar Gupta, Vishal Ghazipuri, Kenneth Hoi Wai, Hriday Raj Kapoor, Ashish Nayak, Suraj Krishna, Pankaj, S.N. Budh, C.S. Badal, Sujit Gautam, B.K. Singh, Sanjeev Kumar, Jai Bhim Recording Studio, and VC Music Company.