Police visit Twitter office in New Delhi after official’s tweet is labeled misleading

Police in India visited Twitter’s office in New Delhi after the social media giant labeled a ruling party official’s tweet as misleading.

The visit happened after Twitter labeled a tweet by Sambit Patra, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party, misleading after it showed a document that claimed to be an instruction guide from the opposition party on how to criticize India’s handling of the pandemic, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A Twitter spokesperson told The Hill that the tweet violated their global Synthetic and Manipulated Media policies and said the company stands by their labeling of the tweet.

“It appears that Twitter has some information which is not known to us on the basis of which they have classified it as such,” the Delhi police said of their visit to the company on Monday, the Journal reported.

It is not clear if police went into the office, but pictures were shown of men in clothing labeled “Special Cell Delhi Police” standing outside the company’s doors.

The opposition party, Indian National Congress, sent out a letter Tuesday saying the document was forged and asked Twitter to label other tweets by government officials with the document as misleading.

This is not the country’s first clash with Twitter as India has ordered social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to take down posts that are critical of the country’s COVID-19 pandemic response in April.