The Delhi Police Special Cell on Tuesday served notices to Congress leaders in connection with the "Toolkit" probe.
According to a report by the Indian Express, Congress social media head Rohan Gupta and party spokesperson M V Rajeev Gowda, who had filed a complaint against Sambit Patra accusing him of sharing a fake "COVID toolkit", have been asked by the police to join the investigation and record their statements. As per the report, in the coming days, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra is also likely to be summoned for questioning.
The notices come a day after the Delhi Police visited Twitter India’s Delhi and Gurgaon offices to ostensibly serve the social media platform a notice in the case.
The Delhi Police's Special Cell on Monday sent a notice to Twitter India in connection with the probe into a complaint about the alleged 'COVID toolkit', asking it to share information based on which it had classified a related tweet by BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra as "manipulated media".
“The Delhi police 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," Delhi Police PRO Chinmoy Biswal said.
The BJP has accused Congress of creating a 'toolkit' that seeks to tarnish the image of the country and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the handling of the COVID pandemic. However, Congress has denied the allegation and claimed that the BJP is propagating a fake 'toolkit' to defame it.
Last week, Twitter labelled as "manipulated media" a tweet by Patra on the alleged 'toolkit'. Twitter says it "may label Tweets that include media (videos, audio, and images) that have been deceptively altered or fabricated".
Biswal said the Delhi Police is inquiring into a complaint in the toolkit matter. "It appears that Twitter has some information which is not known to us and on the basis of which they have classified it (Sambit Patra's tweet) as such. 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," he said.
On May 19, the Congress lodged a police complaint seeking registration of cases against BJP chief J P Nadda, Union minister Smriti Irani, BJP general secretary B L Santosh and Patra over the alleged forgery of documents.
The Chhattisgarh unit of the Congress' students wing NSUI also lodged a complaint against Patra and former chief minister Raman Singh for allegedly "forging" the letterhead of the AICC Research Department and printing "false and fabricated" content on it.
On the basis of the complaint, a case has been filed against Patra and Singh at the Civil Lines police station in Raipur.
(With inputs from PTI)
