India hatred tosses Orkut into legal soup

MUMBAI: When Orkut Buyukkokten developed the social networking service he named after himself, little would have he imagined that a couple of years later the site would land in a legal soup for hosting a hate-India community.

Buyukkokten in Turkish is from great roots or ancestors, while orkut stands for blessed or holy city; strange it would be, citizens of two countries – India and Pakistan - sharing the same roots, have chosen Orkut to libel each other.

The Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court had directed the Maharashtra Government to issue a notice to Google for allegedly spreading hatred about India on its networking service Orkut.

The order follows a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Yugant R Marlapalle. He had in August lodged a complaint against orkut with the assistant commissioner of police, Cidco locality.

Marlapalle had also written to Google, which owns orkut, in Mumbai, requesting them to close the site. The community, “We Hate India” also displays a burning Indian flag.

The PIL also had prayed to appoint a controller under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and close all similar sites on the Internet. The next hearing of the case will be held after six weeks.

According to reports, Google is likely to take “appropriate action” in this case.

Orkut also hosts a few anti-Pakistan and Indo-Pak friendship communities. The “We Hate India” community says one Miraslov Stankovic, who claims to be located in Russia, has created it. He has also created communities such as “Israel Must be Destroyed” and “I Hate Himesh Reshammiya.”

Buyukkokten, a software engineer, had developed the networking service during personal time allowed to him by Google. The search engine major allows its employees to spend twenty per cent of their time working on personal interests.

Konya, Turkey-born Buyukkokten had an interest in social networking and so developed the service. Brazilians form the majority in Orkut, followed by Indians and US citizens.

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