Veteran actor Paresh Rawal said he had been ‘coerced by Twitter’ to remove his tweet about Arundhati Roy. Paresh Rawal wrote in a statement, "With this letter, I inform to all my supporters and citizens of this country that I am being coerced to delete something I tweeted on May 21, or else Twitter would block my account."

"I Paresh Rawal, citizen of India, continue to defend my tweet and support my expression which was made without any prejudice to gender, race, religion or caste. More importantly, I maintain that I ardently love my country and support my country unwaveringly, I stand by and will continue to stand by the citizens and Indian armed forces under any situation and at any cost."

In the tweet that is now deleted, he had written: "Instead of tying stone pelter on the army jeep tie up Arundhati Roy!" It referred to the incident of an army officer strapping a protester to his jeep as a "human shield" against stone-throwers in Kashmir.

Earlier this week, Rawal kicked up a row with remark that author Arundhati Roy should be tied to an army jeep instead of a stone-pelter, a reference to an incident in Kashmir where a protester was used as a shield by security personnel to prevent a mob from attacking them.

The politician said his is a "chosen case" as a lot of people have posted "abusive" material on Twitter in the past but no action was taken against them.

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When contacted, Twitter India declined to comment "on individual accounts". "We do not comment on individual accounts but what we can say is that our rules are clear and we enforce them. We want people to feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs but we draw the line when it comes to behaviour that crosses the line into abuse, including behaviour designed to consciously harass, intimidate, or silence another person's voice."

The company said it would not shy away from suspending anyone's account if they violated there polices. "Those that violate our policies may find their account temporarily locked and/or be subject to permanent suspension. We encourage anyone who spots someone engaging in abusive behaviour to report the content in-app or file a report here."

With inputs from agencies