New Delhi: the team of Delhi Police Special Cell arrived at the offices of Twitter India in Delhi and Gurugram on Monday evening to serve a notice to the microblogging platform in connection to it classifying as “manipulated” a tweet by BJP leader Sambit Patra on “Congress toolkit”.
The team reached the the social site’s offices in Lado Sarai and Gurugram and sought a response to its notice to the site over a complaint regarding the alleged Covid-19 ‘toolkit’, an official said.
“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 ‘manipulative’. It appears that Twitter has some information which is not known to us on the basis of which they have classified it as such. This information is relevant to the enquiry. Special Cell which is conducting the enquiry wants to find out the truth. Twitter which has claimed to know the underlying truth should clarify,” a statement by the Delhi Police said.
It appears that Twitter has some information that is not known to the police. This information is relevant to the inquiry, Delhi Police PRO Chinmoy Biswal said.
The police, however, refused to divulge the contents of the complaint or the identity of the complainant. The BJP has accused the Congress of creating a ‘toolkit’ that seeks to tarnish the image of the country and Prime Minister Narendra Modi by calling the new strain of coronavirus as “India strain” or “Modi strain”.
However, the Congress has denied the allegation and claimed that the BJP is propagating a fake ‘toolkit’ to defame it. Last week, Twitter labelled as “manipulated media” a tweet by Patra on the alleged ‘toolkit’. Twitter says it “may label Tweets that include media (videos, audio, and images) that have been deceptively altered or fabricated”.
Biswal said the Delhi Police is inquiring into a complaint in connection with which clarification has been sought from Twitter regarding the classification of a tweet by Patra as “manipulative”. “It appears that Twitter has some information which is not known to us on the basis of which they have classified it (Patra’s tweet) as such. This information is relevant to the inquiry. The Special Cell, which is conducting the inquiry, wants to find out the truth. Twitter, which has claimed to know the underlying truth, should clarify,” he said.
