Leading digital payment gateway Razorpay said on Thursday that the company shared fact-checking website Alt News’ transaction data with the authorities concerned strictly under the provisions of the Indian law.
Alt News had claimed that Razorpay shared its donor data with the Delhi Police without informing the portal, saying there was no preliminary investigation of any violation on its part.
In a statement, a Razorpay spokesperson said they will continue to hold the highest standard of data security, defend its customers at all times, and also continue to abide by the laws and regulations of India.
“We received a lawful legal order under Section 91 of CRPC that mandated us, as per the regulation under the provisions of Indian law, to share some details about the transactions that took place on Razorpay. We temporarily disabled the account to get more details of the investigation scope and ensure that consumers making these payments are not affected due to this,” the company spokesperson told IANS.
Razorpay said that it didn’t share donor specific Personal Identifiable Information (PII) like bank account, PAN, address, zip code, etc.
“Only a small portion of the donor data was shared to assist in an ongoing investigation, not all of it. We also defended the right of the business to continue to accept payments till the investigation is complete and once we got that clarity we re-enabled payments for them,” the spokesperson said.
AltNews co-founder Mohammed Zubair is currently under police custody and is being interrogated over one of his objectionable tweets which he posted in 2018.
According to the FIR registered by the Delhi Police, he deliberately tweeted the content to provoke breach of peace in the society.
Razorpay said that they are fully abiding and compliant with all necessary laws and regulations of India.
According to legal experts, police and enforcement agencies have power to ask for information or data but it depends on under which provisions the FIR is lodged.
“Normally such data should be asked by the income tax authorities. If this practice of obtaining data by the police is allowed, then it may hurt the privacy rights of donors and other citizens,” the experts said.
