Delhi Police teams descend on two Twitter offices as notice issued in connection with 'Covid toolkit' probe

New Delhi, May 24

The Delhi Police's Special Cell on Monday served a notice to Twitter India in connection with the probe into the alleged 'Covid toolkit' matter, with two teams descending on its offices in Delhi and Gurgaon, officials said.

"The Delhi police team went to the Twitter office to serve a notice to Twitter, as part of a routine process. This was necessitated as we wanted to ascertain who is the right person to serve a notice, as replies by Twitter India MD have been very ambiguous," Delhi Police PRO Chinmoy Biswal said.

Earlier, official sources said that two teams of Special Cell had raided the Twitter India offices located in Delhi's Lado Sarai and in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of the national capital, in connection with the probe into the 'toolkit' matter.

The Special Cell has sought a clarification from the microblogging site for classifying a related tweet by BJP leader Sambit Patra as "manipulated", an official said.

It appears that Twitter has some information that is not known to the police. This information is relevant to the inquiry, Biswal said.

Earlier, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had written to Twitter and objected to its act of tagging some of the posts on an alleged Congress “toolkit” against the Modi government, as “manipulated media”. It had asked Twitter to remove the tag as the matter is pending investigation before a law enforcement agency.

“Twitter unilaterally chose to go ahead and designate certain tweets as ‘Manipulated’, pending investigation by the law enforcement agency. This action not only dilutes the credibility of Twitter as a neutral and unbiased platform facilitating the exchange of views by the users but also puts a question mark on the status of Twitter as an ‘intermediary’,” the Ministry said in its communication.

BJP had on May 18 slammed Congress for its “toolkit on Covid-19 pandemic”. Addressing the media BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra alleged that the toolkit has instructions for social media volunteers of Congress to call the new Covid-19 mutant “Indian strain” or “Modi strain” against the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) instructions.

The Congress on its part vehemently denied the allegations and wrote to Delhi Police Commissioner seeking registration of FIR against BJP President JP Nadda, Union Minister Smriti Irani, party spokesperson Sambit Patra, party leader BL Santhosh and others alleging that they had shared “forged and fabricated documents with the intent to create communal disharmony and civil unrest” and to “divert attention from Modi government’s failure in providing necessary aid to people amidst the current pandemic”.

— Agencies/TNS