Deeksha Sood –
Delhi Crime Branch wrote a letter to Google to provide information about 33 members of two WhatsApp groups following the January 2020 violence in JNU.
Google responded by stating that such information can only be given by the police under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty after receiving the Letter Rogatory, that is order from the Court, as per reports.
On the other hand, the police had written to WhatsApp as well seeking information of pictures, messages and videos shared in those two groups by those 33 members ‘Unity Against Left’ & ‘Friends of RSS’.
WhatsApp declined to share the information and Google recently sent a reply stating that the information pertains to services provided by Google, a company that operates in the U.S. and governed by U.S. laws.
The company said that they would secure the data but would share it only after receiving the request letter under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty.
According to the police, Google is following diplomatic procedures established between the jurisdiction requesting the data and the US government.
Email addresses of 33 students and members of two WhatsApp groups were shared with Google by the Delhi police.
According to the report, “The investigators had to do this because no WhatsApp group was found on the phones of the students who were questioned in connection with the incident. This suggested that the suspects probably deleted their chats. As per reports, the police believe that sharing the backup of Google’s WhatsApp messages will help in the investigation.“