T. Raja Singh belongs to the Indian ruling party Bharatiya Janata. The politician posted on Facebook about Rohingya Muslim immigrants to be shot, among other violent content against Muslims. Facebook has prohibited Singh to create profiles across the platform and will also remove any accounts or pages related to him.
Singh actually has a history of posting violent and hateful content across social media platforms and even in public appearances. The politician was labelled as a ''dangerous individual'' by Facebook, and therefore, has been banned by the company. Many of his posts that have been banned, however, remain online on YouTube and Twitter.
Facebook took the action after The Wall Streel Journal reported that a top Facebook executive in India, Ankhi Das, chose to not respond against Singh's behavior on Facebook because she was afraid it might hurt the company's business prospects in India.
A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that the process of the evaluation of potential violators is extensive and eventually led the company to take the decision to ban the politician's account.
Furthermore, Facebook has been criticized widely in India, where politicians from both the opposition and the ruling party have claimed that the company has political biases. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg also received a letter from India's IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, in which the minister expressed his concerns regarding the alleged political biases of the company’s staff and accused them of suppressing pages that support right-wing views.
