The Railways Ministry has issued a notice to X (formerly Twitter) directing them to delete 285 social media videos of casualties that occurred in the New Delhi Railway Station stampede, a report by Hindustan Times said. The report suggested that the notice was issued on February 17 citing ‘ethical norms’ and the platform’s own content policy, as reasons behind the decision to delete the videos.
The Railways in their notice said that these videos might create an “unwarranted law and order situation” and may also impact the operations of the Indian Railways, especially during this time of “huge rush”, HT reported.
According to HT, the Railways has given 36 hours to X to remove this content and tweets form multiple accounts citing concerns regarding “sensitive or disturbing media depicting deceased individuals”.
This is the second time that a notice like this has been issued. Last time, a notice like this was sent in January to YouTube and Instagram asking them to remove content that had sensitive or misleading or provocative information.
That time, the notice had asked for one YouTube video, one Instagram post, and two Instagram reels to be removed. It was not clear if this notice was regarding any incident in particular.
The stampede at NDLS happened on February 15 where at least 18 people lost their lives. The Delhi High Court on Thursday directed the Indian Railways to review all the issues that are related to sale of platform tickets and passenger limit. The court made the observation while hearing a public interest petition concerning the recent stampede.