A team of Delhi police visited Twitter India offices on Monday, to seek clarification after the micro-blogging site tagged Bharatiya Janata Party's national spokesperson Sambit Patra's tweet as "manipulated media". "This was necessitated as we wanted to ascertain who is the right person to serve a notice, as replies by Twitter India MD have been very ambiguous," the team said.
Two teams of the special cell were at the Twitter India offices located in Delhi's Lado Sarai and Gurgaon, part of the national capital region.
The visit came after the special cell also sent a notice to the social media giant, in which it asked Twitter to explain the rationale and share all the information on how it described the toolkit as manipulated media.
The city police’s special cell has been conducting an inquiry into a complaint filed with the police chief and the Tughlak Road police station on May 18 by two Congress party leaders, seeking an FIR against some BJP leaders for allegedly “forging documents, and circulating fabricated material on Twitter under the hashtag CongressToolkitExposed”.
Twitter is yet to make an official statement over the issue.
What is the 'toolkit' row?
{{/usCountry}}What is the 'toolkit' row?
{{/usCountry}}BJP has accused the Congress of creating a social media toolkit, or a campaign to malign Prime Minister Narendra Modi's image over the government’s handling of the second wave of Covid-19, and the Central Vista Project.
However, the Congress party has denied the allegation and instead has accused BJP of forging "Covid-19 mismanagement document to divert attention."
On May 21, Patra released details of the toolkit in which he claimed that it was created by Rajeev Gowda, in charge of Congress' research wing.
What Congress says
The Congress accused the BJP of concocting the document on Covid-19 to defame the opposition party. It wrote to Twitter on Thursday seeking action against Patra and other BJP leaders for “grossly misusing” the platform. Congress accused the BJP of indulging in “large-scale dissemination of false information”, which “has the potential to cause social unrest in the country”.
On Monday, Gowda said, “This is an effort to cover up the whole thing. The BJP hatched a conspiracy to cook up a forged document and they have been caught. Now they are trying to browbeat Twitter. They have no legal authority to do that.”
'Attempt to "murder" freedom of speech'
In a video statement released hours after the police visit to Twitter offices, Congress' national spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said it exposes the "lameduck attempts" to hide a "fraudulent toolkit" by BJP leaders.
Such attempts to "murder" freedom of speech lay bare the BJP’s guilt, he also said and tagged his video statement on the issue.