Delhi Police carries out raids at Twitter India's offices in Delhi & NCR

New Delhi: A team of the Delhi Police’s special cell carried out a series of searches at Twitter's offices in Delhi and Gurugram, visuals shared by news agency ANI showed. The search operations were in connection to the ‘Congress toolkit’ controversy, news agency PTI reported, quoting Delhi Police officials familiar with the developments.

Delhi Police special cell has also sent notice to Twitter in connection with the inquiry after a complaint regarding the alleged toolkit. It sought clarification from Twitter regarding a related tweet by BJP leader Sambit Patra which was deemed "manipulative" by the site.

"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," an official of the Delhi Police said.

Last week, Twitter flagged as manipulated media Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Samit Patra’s tweet on a toolkit that the ruling party claimed the Congress allegedly prepared to defame Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The BJP alleged the toolkit was aimed at building a “biased narrative” over the manner in which the Centre handled the second wave of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) and the government’s aggressive push for the Central Vista project in the national capital.

Soon after Twitter’s action on Patra, the ministry of electronics and information technology sent a strongly worded notice to Twitter and stated that its decision to use the manipulated media tag appears “prejudged and prejudiced.”

"It appears that Twitter has some information that is not known to the police. This information is relevant to the inquiry," Delhi Police PRO Chinmoy Biswal told news agency PTI.