Twitter slams Indian police

New Delhi: The Indian government’s battle with social media giants escalated on Thursday with Twitter accusing the police of "intimidation" and slamming new IT rules that have also alarmed its peers and privacy campaigners.

Critics say that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration wants to stifle online criticism in what is a huge market for Twitter, Facebook and others. The government rejects the accusations. Late on Monday Indian police visited Twitter’s offices to serve a notice to the US company over its failure to remove a "manipulated media" label that it had placed on a tweet by the ruling party’s spokesman.