Delhi Police raids Twitter India offices

Twitter India office in Delhi and Gurgaon was raided by Delhi Police Special Cell today, in connection with the toolkit attributed to the Indian National Congress (INC) by Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) national spokesperson Sambit Patra.

Patra had claimed in his tweet on May 18 that the Congress party had prepared a toolkit to target the Union Government over the handling of the COVID 19 pandemic and had attached the purported toolkit to his tweet. Several BJP leaders had retweeted Patra’s tweet.

Reacting to Patra’s tweet, Congress’ Social Media department chairperson wrote to Twitter complaining that Patra’s tweet had forged toolkit, which was being attributed to INC. Twitter then tagged Patra’s tweet as “manipulated document”.

On May 21, the Delhi Police Special Cell sent a notice to Twitter seeking details of the tweet.

Delhi Police Public Relations Officer Chinmoy Biswal claimed in a statement, “It appears that Twitter has some information which is not known to us on the basis of which they have classified it as such… police want to find out the truth. Twitter should clarify.”

Meanwhile, a first information report was filed in Chhattisgarh on a complaint by Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress and National Students’ Union of India, against Patra and BJP National Vice-President Raman Singh for allegedly forging the letter of Congress’ Research Department and for posting ‘false and fabricated’ content.

Patra, who was summoned by the Chhattisgarh police to appear either in person or via a video conference for a probe has sought a week’s time to appear before it.

A similar complaint has been lodged by Congress with the Delhi Police, seeking registration of an FIR against BJP National President J P Nadda, Union Minister Smriti Irani, Patra and BJP National General Secretary B L Santhosh.