Indian court orders inquiry into Google over online hate campaign

New Delhi - An Indian court has ordered legal proceedings to begin against the Google internet search engine for an alleged 'Hate India' campaign propagated on its social-networking website, Orkut, media reports said Wednesday.

A court in the western state of Maharashtra on Tuesday made the ruling after considering public-interest litigation about a community called 'We Hate India' - which was full of anti-India propaganda with a picture of the Indian flag being burned - that has been created on Orkut.com.

The petition sought the removal of the community from the website as well as the appointment of a 'controller' to regulate such communities on the internet.

The 'We Hate India' group has 100 members, many of whom are from Pakistan. The community's creator calls himself Miraslov Stankovic and claims he is based in Russia. Another one of his Orkut communities is 'Israel Must be Destroyed.'

Orkut also has 10 communities called 'We Hate Pakistan,' most of whose members are Indians.

'It is part of the war between India and Pakistan in cyberspace,' cyber security analyst Subimal Bhattacharjee told the Hindustan Times newspaper.

The court directed the Maharashtra state government to issue a notice to Google, and if a case is brought against Google, it would most likely be filed by the cyber cell of the Maharashtra police, the Economic Times daily reported.

Google was surprised at the development. 'Like the offline world, there are some people who may object to something in the online world too,' a company executive told the Economic Times.

The executive added that Orkut was a public platform that relied on its users to object to any content online.

© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur