JOIN USPresident Pranab Mukherjee’s secretariat has registered a complaint with Delhi Police over a fake account of the President on Twitter.
The account, ‘President Of India’, which had received a warm reception, was deleted by Twitter within hours of its creation in December 2013.
Suresh Yadav, Officer
on Special Duty to the President, had raised the matter with Joint Commissioner of Police (Rashtrapati Bhavan-Security) Sunil Garg on December 13, 2013.
“A fake account in the name of the President of India was created in Twitter and then removed as soon as we pointed out that it was not an official account,” the complaint states.
Necessary action by relevant authorities was requested to avoid recurrence of fake accounts in the President’s name on social media like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.The complaint was handed over to the Economic Offenses Wing police station after which an FIR under section 66-C of the Information Technology Act was registered on January 29.
“We are probing the case, but are yet to make any breakthrough,” said S D Mishra, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Economic Offenses Wing).
In the first week of December 2013, the Twitter account was described as the ‘Official Twitter Account of the President of India, New Delhi. Pages may be archived under the IT Act’ and it had 1,086 followers. It also followed 27 Twitter handles, including US President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, UK Parliament and PMO India.
Before the account was deleted by Twitter, it had two tweets – “Twitter account of The President of India, New Delhi” and “Welcome to the Twitter page for the @POIndia. The President of India, New Delhi.”
Senior officers were informed about the account soon after the Twitter handle –@POIndia – went viral.
Senior journalist and the Communications Adviser to the Prime Minister, Pankaj Pachauri, had also put out a Tweet claiming the account to be fake.
“Be advised @Twiplomacy that @POIndia is not a genuine account. @TwitterIndia has been advised to take action,” the Tweet had said.