From hate speech to free speech, India is failing to walk the social media tightrope

Online discourse in India is heading in a worrying direction, where only the powerful have their interests protected, writes Adam Withnall

Activist Prashant Bhushan was convicted of contempt after critical tweets against the Supreme Court (Getty)

In the past week, there have been two stories about social media in India that have provoked huge public reactions and should be cause for serious concern.

First, as we reported on Friday, the highly respected public interest lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan was convicted of contempt for criticising the Supreme Court of India and its chief justice in a pair of tweets.

The posts themselves seemed relatively innocuous – one called out the chief justice for posing on a motorbike owned by a political figure while the court itself remained shut down due to coronavirus, and the other questioned the Supreme Court’s record in the past six years under successive chief justices.