Alibaba and its billionaire founder Jack Ma have been summoned by an Indian court over allegations that one of the company’s subsidiaries unfairly dismissed a local member of staff after he objected to censorship and fake news on the e-commerce giant’s apps.
This comes just weeks after New Delhi launched a crackdown on Chinese apps, banning dozens including several operated by Alibaba.
According to court filings seen by Reuters, Pushpandra Singh Parmar, a former employee of Alibaba subsidiary UCWeb Inc., alleges that the company used to censor content seen as negative toward China and allowed false articles to appear on its apps UC Browser and UC News.
The judge in the Gurugram district court has subpoenaed Alibaba, Ma and several other people and company units to appear in court or through a lawyer on Wednesday, according to the documents seen by Reuters.
“UC Web has 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,” an Alibaba representative said in a statement emailed to Caixin on Monday.
Parmar, who worked as an associate director at UC Web’s office in Gurugram until October 2017, provided in his filing clippings of posts that circulated on the UC News app that he said spread falsehoods, including a 2018 post that said war had broken out between India and Pakistan, Reuters reported, citing the court filings, although admitting that it couldn’t independently confirm the content of Parmar’s filings.
There was no war between the two nuclear-armed neighbors that year.
Parmar also alleges that UC Web had a “sensitive word list” that contained banned keywords in Hindi and English like “India-China border” and “Sino-India War,” according to the Reuters report.
The subpoenas come a month after India banned 59 Chinese apps including UC News, UC Browser, TikTok and WeChat on national security grounds, against the backdrop of deteriorating China-India relations in the wake of a deadly weeks-long border clash.
The ban has led UC Web to lay off some of its employees in India, a market it entered nearly a decade ago, but whether the company will suspend local operations entirely remains uncertain. UC Web also operates short video app Vmate and the Android app store 9Apps in India.
In June, UC Browser was India’s second most popular mobile browser after Google’s Chrome, with a market share of 10.19%, according to market research firm Statcounter.
Two weeks ago, the Indian Information Technology Ministry required owners of the banned 59 Chinese apps to answer a questionnaire made up of more than 70 questions revolving around content moderation, foreign government ties and user data security.
Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com) and editor Joshua Dummer (joshuadummer@caixin.com)
