Middle finger emoji: WhatsApp gets legal notice

A middle finger emoji in WhatsApp has prompted a Delhi lawyer, Gurmeet Singh, to send a legal notice to the internet messaging service app owned by Facebook. The middle finger is considered as a rude or insulting gesture.

Singh, in his legal notice, said that such an emoji was illegal and asked WhatsApp to remove emoji from its service within 15 days, said reports.The notice also cited a law in Ireland which considers a showing of the middle finger as an offence. Further terming the gesture as "obscene and lewd", Singh's notice says that if aimed at a woman, the gesture was "an offence under the Sections 354 and 509 of the Indian Penal Code".

He also threatened WhatsApp of civil or criminal cases if the app fails to remove middle finger emoji. Middle Finger was approved as part of Unicode 7.0 in 2014 under the name "Reversed Hand With Middle Finger Extended" and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015, according to emojipedia.org.