Indian Court Summons Alibaba's Jack Ma

An Indian court has summoned Alibaba and its founder Jack Ma in a lawsuit in which a former employee in India says he was wrongfully fired after objecting to what he saw as censorship and fake news on company apps, documents seen by Reuters showed.

The case comes weeks after India mentioned security issues in blocking Alibaba's UC News, UC Browser and 57 other Chinese apps after a dispute between the two countries' border forces.

After the ban that China criticized, India sought written responses from all the firms involved, including if they censored content or operated on behalf of some foreign government.

In court filings dated July 20 and previously not reported, the former employee of Alibaba's UC Web, Pushpandra Singh Parmar, alleges the company used to censor content seen as unfavorable to China and its apps UC Browser and UC News showcased false news "to cause social and political turmoil".

Civil Judge Sonia Sheokand of a district court in Gurugram, a satellite city of India's capital, New Delhi, delivered a summons to Alibaba, Jack Ma and around a dozen persons or company groups, ordering them to appear in court or via a lawyer on July 29, court documents revealed.

The judge has also sought written responses from the company and its executives within 30 days, according to the summons.

UC India said in a statement it had been "unwavering in its commitment to the India market and the welfare of its local employees, and its policies are in compliance with local laws. We are unable to comment on ongoing litigation".

Alibaba representatives did not respond to requests for comment from the Chinese company or on behalf of Jack Ma.

Parmar, who worked as an associate director at the UC Web office in Gurugram until October 2017 and is seeking $268,000 in damages, referred Reuters queries to his lawyer, Atul Ahlawat, who declined to comment saying the matter was sub judice.

The court case is the new challenge for Alibaba in India since the Indian Government's prohibition on devices, following which UC Web has begun to lay off some of its employees in India.

Until the apps were blocked, the UC Browser had been downloaded at least 689 million times in India, while UC News had 79.8 million installs, most of which were released in 2017 and 2018 by the analytics company Sensor Tower.

ALLEGATIONS IN COURT

India has said that it prohibits 59 apps after getting "credible reports" that these apps present a danger to India 's sovereignty. The IT Minister stated that a measure was made to protect residents' data and public safety.

In more than 200 pages of court filings, reviewed by Reuters, former employee Parmar included clippings of some posts showcased on the UC News app that he alleged were false.

One post from 2017 was headlined in Hindi: "2,000-rupee notes to be banned from midnight today". Another headline of a 2018 post said: "Just now: War broke out between India and Pakistan" and contained a description of firing across the disputed border between the countries.

Reuters could not independently verify the veracity of the claims in the court filing. India did not ban its 2,000-rupee currency note and no war occurred between India and Pakistan in 2018.

The lawsuit also contains a "sensitive words list" with keywords in Hindi and English like "India-China border" and "Sino-India war" that the court filing alleges were used by UC Web to censor content on its platforms in India.

"In order to control any news related content to be published against China was automatically/manually rejected by an audit system evolved for this purpose," the filing said.

The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi and the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing, as well as the Indian IT Ministry in New Delhi, did not respond to requests for comments.