In a new twist to the investigation of the toolkit case, a team of Special Cell of Delhi Police reached the office of social media giant Twitter in Delhi's Lado Sarai area.
The team found the office closed, after which it returned without investigation. The raid came hours after the Delhi Police sent a notice to Twitter over a "manipulated media" tag used on tweets alleging a Congress "toolkit" against the Central government.
The Delhi Police has said that it went to the office to serve the notice.
"The Delhi police team went to Twitter office to serve a notice to Twitter, as a part of 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," said the police.
According to sources quoted by Zee News, another of the special cell will soon reach the Gurugram office of Twitter as well.
Earlier in the day, Delhi Police sent a notice to Twitter, seeking an explanation from the microblogging site on what grounds it tagged BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra's tweet on the alleged Congress toolkit designed to target the Central government as 'manipulated media'.
The Delhi Police Special Cell asked Twitter to explain the rationale and share all the information on how it described the toolkit as manipulated media.
"The 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 the basis of which they have classified it as such," the Police said in the notice sent to Twitter.
"This information is relevant to the enquiry. The Special Cell, which is conducting the enquiry, wants to find out the truth. Twitter, which has claimed to know the underlying truth, should clarify," the notice added.
On May 18, the BJP slammed Congress for an alleged "toolkit on COVID-19 pandemic". Addressing the media, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra claimed that the toolkit has instructions for social media volunteers of Congress to call the new COVID-19 mutant the "Indian strain" or "Modi strain" against the World Health Organization's (WHO) instructions.
However, the Congress 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 for 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".
The complaint was made after remarks by BJP leaders on social media with the hashtag #CongressToolkitExposed in which they accused Congress of spreading "false, negative news and stirring up discontent".
