Google..! The Delhi Police Crime Branch has received a reply from the company stating that such details cannot be provided until the police sender a Letter of Rogatory pursuant to the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) to 33 members of two Whatsapp groups following the January 2020 violence at GNU.
The Delhi police crime branch was informed. On 5 January last year, about 100 masked people with sticks and bars were rampaged for about four hours inside the university and 36 students, teachers and staff were injured.
The case was transferred to the Crime Branch, and the FIR was registered. There is no arrest to date. Police had written to WhatsApp and Google to ask the 33 Students and the two WhatsApp Groups – ‘United Against the Left’ and ‘Friends of RSS’ – for details of the messages, photos and videos.
While WhatsApp refused to share the details, Google has recently replied, stating that the required information relates to Google LLC services, a company that operates and operates in the USA and that is governed by U.S. legislation.
You said that they would retain the information, but would only share it after receiving an MLAT Letter Rogatory.
In these cases, Google follows diplomatic processes between the competence requesting data and the United States government,” said a police force.
A Rogatory Letter is a formal request for legal assistance from a foreign court to investigate an entity in another country.
MLAT is an agreement for collecting and exchanging information between two or more countries to implement public or criminal legislation.
The police communicated the 33 students and WhatsApp Groups’ e-mail addresses to Google.
Sources said that investigators needed to do so, since the students who were interviewed in connection with this occurrence could not find whatsapp groups on the phones, suggesting that their chat had probably been cleaned by the suspects.
Sources said the police thought Google could share WhatsApp backup messages The police of Delhi released the names of nine people on 9 January last year, all students, seven of whom were identified as left-wing students.
The other two belonged to the ABVP student union of the RSS, although the police did not name the organisation.
20 police staff members of the Special Investigation Team established a camp office in the JNU administrative block following registration of a FIR.
Later the police questioned student Komal Sharma from the University of Delhi, who claimed that during violence she was not on campus.
