Amit Malviya: The face-off between an alleged fabricated report filed by The Wire castigating BJP IT Cell in charge Amit Malviya for his high-handedness in getting a report withdrawn from the Instagram handle cascaded to another level. Malviya stuck to his word and took the news website to task with the Delhi Police on Saturday filing an FIR against the news website.
According to police sources, the complaint was lodged with the Special Commissioner of Police, Crime at Police Headquarters in Delhi. The BJP leader had threatened action against the alleged fake news and had clearly decided to take action against The Wire for reports claiming that he had used his special rights to pull down posts on Meta-owned Instagram.
Papers fabricated
In his detailed complaint, Amit Malviya alleged that The Wire fabricated documents with a clear aim to malign and tarnish his good name. He also urged the police to file an FIR against The Wire’s founding editors Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, MK Venu and Deputy Editor Jahnavi Sen for “cheating, forgery, harming reputation”.
The genesis of this faceoff dates back to a provocative report filed by the website wherein it claimed that Meta-owned Facebook & Instagram had ostensibly withdrawn an Instagram post within a few minutes of it being uploaded by a private account with the name “Cringearchivist”. The report claimed that the IT cell chief of the BJP, had certain privileges to ‘remove’ posts from the Meta-owned Instagram site.
Controversy erupts
The reports soon sparked off a massive controversy with both the website and social media giant sticking to the stand that it was authentic news. Questions abounded about the credibility of the sources referred to by The Wire.
The Wire editor Siddharth Varadarajan stated that the “stories came from multiple Meta sources—whom we know, have met and verified”.
Meta denies
However, on October 11, 2022, Meta’s Communication Head, Mr Andy Stone, turned the tables or so it seemed since he issued a categorical denial stating that the documents presented by The Wire in its report were “fabricated”.
Stung by the turn of events, The Wire was forced to retract the stories and issued an apology. “To have rushed to publish a story we believed was reliable without having the associated technical evidence vetted independently is a failure of which we cannot permit repetition,” it stated. However, Amit Malviya would have none of it and decided to take action against the errant party.
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