New Delhi: Twitter has transferred India head Manish Maheshwari, against whom an FIR was registered in Uttar Pradesh in connection with a video of an alleged hate crime, to the US.
While the company did not specify any reason for the change, it said Maheshwari will move to the US as Senior Director (Revenue Strategy and Operations) and focus on new markets in his new role.
Twitter Vice President Japan and Asia Pacific Yu Sasamoto shared the development in a tweet.
Thank you to @manishm for your leadership of our Indian business over the past 2+ years. Congrats on your new US-based role in charge of revenue strategy and operations for new markets worldwide. Excited to see you lead this important growth opportunity for Twitter.
— yu-san (@yusasamoto) August 13, 2021
When contacted, Twitter confirmed the development and said Maheshwari is “moving into a new role based in San Francisco as Senior Director, Revenue Strategy and Operations focused on New Market Entry”.
The company did not disclose details around the succession plan after Maheshwari moves to the US.
Before joining Twitter, Maheshwari was the CEO of Network18 Digital. He has also worked with organisations including Flipkart and P&G, among others.
Twitter has been at odds with the Union government over the past many months for its various actions on tweets and accounts of users as well as its delay in compliance with the IT rules that came into effect in May this year.
In June, an FIR was registered against Maheshwari in connection with the Ghaziabad assault case, in which an elderly Muslim man was allegedly kidnapped, beaten up and asked to chant “Jai Shri Ram”.
The Karnataka high court on July 23, quashed the notice issued to Maheshwari by Uttar Pradesh police, seeking his personal appearance as part of its probe.
The Ghaziabad Police on June 15 booked Twitter Inc, Twitter Communications India Pvt.Ltd.(Twitter India), along with The Wire, journalists Mohammed Zubair and Rana Ayyub, besides Congress leaders Salman Nizami, Maskoor Usmani, Shama Mohamed and writer Saba Naqvi.
Twitter, which has an estimated 1.75 crore users in India, had also been confronted by the Union government over what it saw was deliberate defiance and failure to comply with the IT rules, despite repeated reminders.
On August 10, the Centre had told the Delhi high court that Twitter was ‘prima facie’ in compliance with the new IT rules by appointing a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), Resident Grievance Officer (RGO) and Nodal Contact Person on permanent basis.
(With PTI inputs)