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An Indian court has thrown out Twitter lawsuit against the federal government who sought to challenge New Delhi’s lockdown orders in tweets and accounts.

The Karnataka High Court dismissed the high-profile indictment, filed last year, and also fined the Elon Musk-owned company 5 million Indian rupees ($61,000). The court noted that despite notices being issued, Twitter did not provide reasons why it was delayed. Compliance with Indian IT Rules Amendments..

“Your client (Twitter) received notices and your client did not comply. The penalty for non-compliance is 7 years in prison and an unlimited fine. That didn’t deter your client either,” a single judge said in a scathing verdict on Friday.

“So you haven’t given any reason why you delayed compliance, more than a year late… then all of a sudden you comply and you approach the Court. You are not a farmer but a multi-billion dollar company.”

Twitter entered a guilty plea against the Indian government in the Karnataka High Court in Bangalore last year, before Musk’s takeover was completed, alleging that New Delhi had abused its power by ordering it to remove “ arbitrarily and disproportionately” various tweets from his platform. Some blocking orders “refer to political content posted by the official handles of political parties,” Twitter added in the lawsuit.

Musk, who seems to have a much cozier relationship with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, last year cited Twitter’s litigation against New Delhi as one of the many reasons it wanted out of the acquisition deal. His lawyers said the lawsuit exposed risks to Twitter’s third-biggest market.

Twitter had filed the lawsuit after a difficult year and a half in India, a period during which it was asked to remove hundreds of accounts and tweets, many of which critics said were objectionable solely because they denounced Indian government policies. Ya Modi.

Twitter partially complied with the requests but sought to fight many of the legal orders. Under India’s IT rules amendment that came into effect in 2021, Twitter had little to no room to individually challenge takedown orders.

Friday’s verdict follows Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who alleged earlier this month that India regularly issued requests for the social media giant to remove certain posts and accounts, often accompanying these demands with threats of legal repercussions in cases of non-compliance.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the federal deputy minister for information technology in India, refuted Dorsey’s claims, alleging that the Twitter co-founder was trying to “remove that very dubious period from Twitter’s history.”