india

Updated: Dec 01, 2016 07:42 IST

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account was hacked on Wednesday, with about a dozen offensive tweets being posted within a few minutes.

The first six tweets were deleted shortly after being posted around 8.45pm. More offensive tweets, however, kept showing up on the Twitter account – @OfficeOfRG -- every few minutes and were being deleted immediately after being posted.

The hackers also removed Gandhi’s profile picture and the account description was altered to read “This is the official account of the Office of Retard Gandhi”.

Confirming the development, Gandhi’s office said efforts were being made to rectify the problem, according to PTI. The Congress raised questions on the digital safety of all Indians and said it reflects disturbing insecurities of the prevalent fascist culture in the country.

Confirming that Gandhi’s account was hacked, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala tweeted: “Such lowly tactics will never drown the sane voice of reason nor deter Sh. Rahul Gandhi from raising.”

“Such unscrupulous, unethical and roguish conduct of venal trolls to hack Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter handle reflects disturbing insecurities of prevalent fascist culture,” he added.

Surjewala targeted the government for the lack of digital safety saying if it could not protect a private platform for conversation of crores of the people of India, how it could ever protect them from being hacked in terms of their “financial money”.

“The Congress party has taken the issue very seriously. We will be lodging a formal complaint with the Cyber Police and we sincerely hope that the government will show sincerity of purpose in investigating those who are perpetuating this crime and will punish them within a time-bound frame,” Surjewala told ANI.

(With inputs from ANI)