City Court Issues Summons To Former Facebook India MD

The Ranga Reddy district sessions court for SC & ST cases issued summons to former MD (Operations) of Facebook India, Keerthiga Reddy, in response to a petition filed by one Pradeep Manikonda, a native of the city.

The court asked Reddy to appear before it on November 21 for a hearing.

In his petition, Pradeep told the court that Reddy had harassed him for pointing out mistakes in the Facebook website and "fraud" done by the social networking site, and had also threatened him with dire consequences.

He told the court that Reddy had invited him for discussions to the Facebook office in Hyderabad, and had abused him verbally there.

He also told the court that he faced a threat to his life from Reddy, and urged the court to take action against her.

Speaking to media persons at the Somajiguda press club, Pradeep, a cyber security engineer, said that he had rich experience in the domain, and that Facebook had invited him to its office in California in 2010 for a presentation, in which he exposed the "faults" of the company's popular website.

He alleged that the management of Facebook had developed a grudge against him following that "exposure".

"Following my presentation, the management of Facebook, including its founder Mark Zuckerberg, threatened that they would file a false case that I had entered the office of Facebook illegally. Zuckerberg did go ahead and file a case of civil harassment and cyber attack against me at a court in Santa Clara of California, and the court ordered me to maintain a distance of 100 feet from Zuckerberg in the US," Pradeep said.

Pradeep said that he challenged the verdict of the Santa Clara superior court, and had also filed a global humiliation and defamation case for $100 million.

He said that he returned to Hyderabad in 2014. Keerthiga Reddy had then called him to her office in the city in the name of holding discussions, and had insulted him while demanding that he withdraw his defamation case, he claimed.

He said that he had filed a case in the Madhapur police station against Reddy, but that the police had closed the case following pressure from Reddy, terming it false, and without providing him any information about it.

He said that the police did not provide any security to him, either.

He claimed that he had been fighting against the management of Facebook ever since. He said that he was facing frequent attacks from the management of Facebook, and that the police were not responding to his complaints. He said that he was therefore forced to file a protest petition in the district court.