Delhi Police Special Cell Team Interrogated Twitter India Chief Over 'Congress Toolkit Case': Sources

A senior-level team of Delhi Police's Special Cell had gone to Bengaluru, Karnataka on May 31 to interrogate Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari regarding 'Congress toolkit case', Sources said.

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New Delhi: A senior-level team of Delhi Police's Special Cell had gone to Bengaluru, Karnataka on May 31 to interrogate Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari regarding the alleged Congress toolkit case, Sources said.

According to the inputs, this was pertaining to Twitter India flagging tweets by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders as "manipulated media".

In another development, Delhi Police informed on Thursday that they've received a complaint against actor Swara Bhaskar, Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari and others at Police Station Tilak Marg, in connection with the incident in Loni (Ghaziabad) where a man was thrashed and his beard was chopped off. "It is under inquiry," they said.

Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director of Twitter in India, was reportedly interrogated by a team of the Delhi Police Special Cell in Bengaluru on May 31.

This happened a week after the Delhi Police team visited Twitter's offices in Delhi and Gurgaon to "serve notice" in the alleged Congress 'Toolkit' case wherein certain tweets by BJP leaders were flagged as having "manipulated media".

After the visit, Delhi Police issued a statement informing that its team "went to the Twitter office to serve a notice to Twitter, as a 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."

Earlier, Delhi Police had sent a notice to India MD Manish Maheshwari demanding an explanation for adding the "manipulated media" tag to tweets by BJP leaders on the alleged Congress "Toolkit".

The Delhi Police Special Cell asked the microblogging platform to explain the reason behind their decision to add the tag.

"Delhi Police is enquiring into a complaint in which clarification is sought from Twitter on the classification of a tweet by Sambit Patra as 'manipulative'. It appears that Twitter has some information that is not known to us on basis of which they've classified it as such," the police had said.

"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," it added.

The Indian government had also objected to Twitter for flagging BJP leaders' tweets on the alleged Congress ''Toolkit'' that was claimed to be targetting the Centre over its Covid-19 handling.