CLAIM
A tweet shared by @thewire_com quoted Divya Spandana, head of Congress’ IT cell, as saying, "We have ordered Twitter India CEO to suspend all the accounts posting Rahul Gandhi jokes/memes/videos and also instructed them to not allow any BJP related trends on India Trend List (sic)."
The tweet, posted on Sunday, 27 January, had over 1.3k likes at the time of writing this article, and had been re-tweeted over 850 times.
Vikas Pandey, coordinator of the Facebook Page 'I Support NaMo', was among those who had re-tweeted the post. Pandey is followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the micro-blogging website.
The tweet was also shared by accounts such as 'Modi Dobara 2019’ and by several journalists who eventually backtracked.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The claim is false. Why? Because the account @thewire_com is a parody of 'thewire.in'. The bio for the page reads: "wires are Sweet. 100% Fake. Satire. Parody. All tweets are Fake. DM for suggestions. #Parody (sic)."
Further, the logo of the account in its display picture says: "The Lire."
Another obvious giveaway is the lack of the blue tick, which Twitter prescribes only to ‘verified accounts’.
FIRST 'TIMES HOW' AND NOW 'THE LIRE'
In April 2018, an identical claim had been shared by a parody account of TV channel Times Now. 'Times How' had posted the same quote and attributed it to Spandana.
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