Police visit Twitter offices to probe ‘manipulated’ tag
The Delhi Police on Monday said they have sought a clarification from Twitter in connection with a tweet by Bharatiya Janata Party’s national spokesperson Sambit Patra about an alleged toolkit released by the Congress party that the micorblogging site tagged as “manipulated media”.
Delhi Police officers on Monday evening visited Twitter’s offices in South Delhi’s Lado Sarai and Golf Course Road in Gurugram.
A police team from Lodhi Colony’s special cell visited the offices to secure the participation of Twitter’s managing director Manish Maheshwari as part of the probe. “...This is just a preliminary inquiry,” a senior police officer said.
The visit came after the special cell of Delhi Police asked Twitter to explain the “manipulated media” tag.
NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police on Monday said they have sought a clarification from Twitter in connection with a tweet by Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) national spokesperson Sambit Patra about an alleged toolkit released by the Congress party that the micorblogging site tagged as “manipulated media.”
Delhi Police officers on Monday evening visited offices in South Delhi’s Lado Sarai and Golf Course Road in Gurugram. A police team from Lodhi Colony’s special cell visited the offices to secure the participation of Twitter’s managing director Manish Maheshwari as part of the probe.
“The person(Manish Maheshwari) who had to join investigation said he is not the concerned person. He sent a reply to the DCP of special cell that he was part of Twitter India and not Twitter Inc. Any tagging to that concerned tweet was done by Twitter Inc. Though his bio said he is the MD of Twitter in India. So we visited the Twitter office to summon the concerned and verify his claims. This is just a preliminary inquiry,” a senior police officer said. The visit came after the special cell of Delhi Police asked Twitter to explain the “manipulated media” tag.
The city police’s special cell has been conducting an enquiry into a complaint filed with the police chief and the Tughlak Road police station on May 18 by two Congress party leaders, seeking a first information report (FIR) against some BJP leaders for allegedly “forging documents, and circulating fabricated material on Twitter under the hashtag CongressToolkitExposed.” No FIR was registered till Monday evening in the matter, the police said.
Twitter flagged the Patra tweet on Friday. In his tweet, Patra released details of the Toolkit, a social media campaign playbook, that the Congress allegedly prepared to defame Prime Minister Narendra Modi and build a biased narrative over India’s management of Covid-19, and the Central Vista project.
The IT ministry has already written to Twitter , expressing its displeasure at the tagging, and asking it to remove the “manipulated media” descriptor.
“Delhi Police is enquiring into a complaint in which clarification is sought from the Twitter regarding the classification of a tweet by Sambit Patra as manipulated . It appears that Twitter has some information which is not known to us on the basis of which they have classified it as such .... ” the Delhi Police said in a statement released on Monday evening by their spokesperson Chinmoy Biswal.
Twitter did not respond to queries on the incident.
Rajeev Gowda, who heads the Congress’s research department on Monday 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.”
Patra did not respond requests for comment.