Twitter India Chief Quizzed on 31 May Over Cong ‘Toolkit’: Report

This took place a week after a team of the Delhi Police Special Cell visited the offices of Twitter India in Delhi.

A senior-level team of Delhi Police’s Special Cell had reportedly questioned Twitter India’s Managing Director Manish Maheshwari in Bengaluru on 31 May regarding the ‘Congress toolkit case’.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)

A senior-level team of Delhi Police's Special Cell had questioned Twitter India Managing Director Manish Maheshwari in Bengaluru on 31 May regarding the 'Congress toolkit case', news agency ANI reported on Thursday, 17 June, quoting sources.

It may be noted that this questioning took place a week after a team of the Delhi Police Special Cell landed up at the offices of Twitter India in Delhi’s Lado Sarai and Gurugram on 24 May.

According to sources cited by ANI, the police team had gone to the offices to serve a notice to the company, as a part of a "routine process". "This was necessitated as it was to ascertain who the right person was to serve a notice, as replies by the Twitter India MD had been very ambiguous," the sources were quoted as saying.

Earlier, the police had sent a notice and sought a clarification from Twitter regarding the classification of a tweet by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sambit Patra as ‘manipulated media’.

What is the Congress ‘Toolkit’ Case?

The case pertains to the 'toolkit', which BJP leaders said was allegedly created by the Congress to target the government over its handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra's tweet was tagged as 'manipulated media' by Twitter two days after the party accused Congress for making a 'toolkit' targeting the government over its COVID handling.

On 18 May, Patra had shared screenshots of the alleged ‘toolkit’, claiming that the Congress had created the document to “corner” Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his handling of the pandemic.

Following this, the Government of India had made a "strong" communication to Twitter, objecting to the use of the 'manipulated media' tags on certain tweets by Indian politicians, and asked the social media company to remove them "in the interests of fairness and equity", sources in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had said.

The Congress, meanwhile, had approached the Delhi Police with a complaint against several BJP leaders, and accused them of 'forgery'. The party also wrote a formal complaint to Twitter, seeking suspension of accounts of BJP leaders who were "indulging in spreading forged documents attributing to Congress".

(With inputs from ANI.)