Mumbai: Police Blunder Results In FIR Against YouTuber Dhruv Rathee Over Defaming Tweet From Parody Account

Mumbai, Saturday, 13: The First Information Report (FIR) was registered against YouTuber Dhruv Rathee with the Maharashtra Cyber police over a defaming tweet that turned out to be posted by a parody account instead.

The tweet on ‘X’ (previously known as Twitter) by a user @dhruvrahtee, a verified handle said, “India is the only country where you can pass the UPSC without giving an exam, but for this, you have to be born as the daughter of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla. Om Birla’s daughter Anjali Birla passed UPSC without giving any exam, she is a model by profession. The Modi government is mocking our education system.” (This tweets currently stands deleted on the platform)

Within hours, the tweet gained a high number of traction and subsequently Anjali’s cousin Naman Maheshwari approached the Maharashtra Cyber police to register an FIR against Rahtee. As per the FIR, sections of defamation and various Information Technology (IT) Act were slapped on Rathee for not only defaming Anjali but also using her photo without consent.

The police began their probe into the matter and hours later, they realized the one who posted the tweet was not Rathee, but someone else handling Rathee’s parody account. The bio of the account states, “This is a fan and parody account and is not affiliated with the original account of @dhruvrathee. I am not impersonating anyone. This account is a parody.”

On Sunday, the cyber police approached the handler of the parody account asking them to remove the objectionable posts they tweeted. After deleting the posts, the parody account tweeted saying, “As directed by @MahaCyber1, I have deleted all my posts and comments on Anjali Birla. I will like to apologize as I was unaware about the facts and copied someone else’s tweets and shared it.”

On the Saturday’s edition, a city-based newspaper published a news article regarding an FIR by Cyber police against Rathee, which the latter took to ‘X’ and said, “Why is your newspaper’s front page spreading fake news about me? Go use your eyes to see that this alleged post was done by some random parody Twitter account. I have nothing to do with this.”