FIR against social media users for sharing content against FSSAI

The Delhi Police registered an FIR against several social media users for circulating “misleading content” and “confidential internal documents” after they uploaded posts that criticised the lack of monitoring by national food regulator, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).

The FIR was registered against several social media users including @khurpenchh, @YTKDIndia, @gemsofbabus_, @IamTheStory_, and @NalinisKitchen at the IP Estate Police station after they received a complaint on March 24 by Dr Sanjay Kumar, an official with FSSAI.

According to the complainant, some social media users and content creators had been running a “highly coordinated” campaign to malign the reputation of the food regulatory body.

Taking to social media platform X, Youtube Nalini Unagar who said that there was an FIR against her for expressing anger against the rise of “fake” food items and the loss of faith in FSSAI. “Fake milk, paneer, vegetables, and oil are sold openly in the market, the entire FSSAI department should be thrown out because it feels like they don’t even exist in India. This is not a personal attack but the anger of 140 crore Indians who are being fed fake food every day”, her now deleted post read.

While Ms. Unnagar said that she has no space in her life to engage with such harsh actions in the face of creating awareness, another social media account @khurpenchh said that they would like to see legal action take place. “They will expose themselves”, the wrote in a post, adding that if legal processes continue then FSSAI officials “will expose themselves”, he said in the post.

Meanwhile, the police have registered an FIR under section 94 (issue summons to produce documents) and have issued summons to owners of several social media accounts named in the FIR. The investigators have noted that certain documents have been sourced from materials that were supposed to be “highly confidential”, and some have been “manipulated”.