Google blocks emails of Gujarat man over ‘nudity childhood photos’, receives court notice

Google blocked Neel Shukla’s account last April for policy violations

Ahmedabad:

A man uploaded a nude childhood photo on Google Drive, leading to his email account being compromised for nearly a year and forcing him to knock on the door of the Gujarat High Court.

The High Court issued a notice to Google India Pvt Limited, asking it to block the email account of the petitioner for “clear child abuse” because he had uploaded a photo on Google Drive of his grandmother giving him a bath when he was two years old.

The Vaibhavi D Nanavati court issued notices to Google, the central government and the state government on March 15, which will be returned on March 26.

The petitioner, Neel Shukla, a computer engineer, uploaded childhood photos on Google Drive, including one of him being bathed by his grandmother as a toddler.

Shukla’s lawyer Dipen Desai told the court that the tech giant blocked Shukla’s account in April last year for violating its policy on such “obvious child abuse” content.

He said Shukla moved the high court on March 12 after the company failed to resolve the issue through the grievance mechanism.

Desai told the court Shukla had been unable to access his email since Google blocked the email account, which had caused losses to his business.

“Google said this amounted to ‘blatant child abuse’ and they have blocked all content,” the petitioners said in their request. “I cannot access my email and my business has been affected because all content has been blocked.” ” Shukla contacted the Gujarat police and the Centre’s Department of Science and Technology, India’s core agency for dealing with such issues, but they too failed to take action and he was forced to seek judicial redress.

The petitioner also requested an emergency hearing because he received notice from Google that the data associated with his account would be deleted in April, one year after the account became inactive.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)