Twitter user The Skin Doctor has sent a legal notice to self-proclaimed ‘fact-checkers’ at Altnews.in accusing them of breach of privacy. When the admins of the website are not busy spreading fake news themselves or running an agenda, they spend their times targeting private individuals for fun.
On 18th November 2018, they published a strange article on a Twitter user who goes by the handle @TheSkinDoctor13. In their report, Altnews.in alleged that The Skin Doctor was running another handle called NEELLoneWolf and masquerading as a female Islamist troll.
They presented “evidence” like old tweets (with no time stamp) and extremely convoluted logic to reach this conclusion. They used this convoluted logic to say that the Prime Minister follows The Skin Doctor and he shouldn’t exonerate Islamists by saying Right-leaning accounts run Islamist handles and basically discredit the man.
In the notice, The Skin Doctor has asked for an unconditional public apology and asked the admins to take down the post within 48 hours of receipt of the notice. Failing which, appropriate civil as well as criminal action could be initiated against AltNews. The notice further says that a sum of Rs. 5 crore be paid to The Skin Doctor for “the use of such malicious and derogatory information on a public forum, visible to millions of users and reported in various social media platforms.”
The Skin Doctor is a private individual and holds no public office, so his identity really shouldn’t be anyone’s business. Doxxing – to search and publish private or identifying information on the individual over the internet, usually with a malicious intent, could be dangerous for that person. Hence, AltNews publishing personal information while being crusaders of privacy themselves is quite ironical. Just to be clear, The Skin Doctor is a private individual, who does not hold any public office, is not an elected public representative.
The Skin Doctor had earlier released a statement denying the allegations by AltNews. He also pointed out that while he is refuting the allegations, running multiple accounts is not illegal (unlike what AltNews did).
https://twitter.com/theskindoctor13/status/1064390894546272256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
He had said that he has filed a police complaint about publishing private message (section 66E), breach of privacy (section 72) and misrepresentation (section 71) which are all punishable offences. The Skin Doctor has now consulted his lawyers and has decided to take the legal course to bring the matter to its logical end.
This is not the first time AltNews admin Pratik Sinha has gone personal with an individual. Earlier he had displayed his stalker tendencies (the ones which could morph into even dangerous crimes if not controlled) against Rahul Roushan by targeting his wife and his newborn 2-month-old daughter.