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NEW DELHI: Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Saturday said his Twitter handle was hacked, a remark that came after a controversial tweet was posted from his handle on former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s death anniversary.

Chowdhury denied using the phrase “when a big tree falls, ground shakes” along with a photograph of Rajiv Gandhi while paying tributes to the late PM. Rajiv Gandhi had said “earth shakes when a big tree falls”, which was seen by critics as justifying the anti-Sikh violence following the assassination of his mother and the then PM Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. “My Twitter handle was hacked. Why should I make such statements?” he said.

On May 21, 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam suicide bomber during a poll rally in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu.

The controversial tweet was deleted soon after it appeared on Chowdhury’s handle and another post was made with a changed text accompanying Rajiv Gandhi’s image. “A malicious campaign is propagated by those forces inimical to me. The tweet against my name in the tweeter account has nothing to do with my own observation,” he tweeted. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT cell head Amit Malviya said: “Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has decided to call a spade a spade. Gandhis be damned.” “An FIR has been lodged at the South Avenue Police Station in New Delhi,” Chowdhury said. In the police complaint, he said: “Today, an unscrupulous, biased and a content tainted with absolute malafide was posted on my Twitter account when I was busy with the party programme.”

Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury