BJP leader Amit Malviya took to Twitter today to share that he would be filing both civil and criminal proceedings against The Wire.

'Not only will I be setting the criminal process in motion but I will also sue them in a civil court seeking damages as they forged documents with a view to align my reputation', said Malviya in his statement.

It was on 10 October that The Wire published a report which alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Amit Malviya enjoys special privileges with respect to Instagram.

• Malviya is the head of the BJP's National Information & Technology Department, also known as the ‘IT cell’ of the party.

• The Wire alleged that the privileges enjoyed by Malviya’s Instagram account were such that if he ‘reported’ a post on the platform, it would be taken down by Instagram, no questions asked.

• This is because, according to Wire, Malviya was on Meta’s cross-check or ‘X-check’ list. As per The Wire, profiles which are on this list are not subjected to rules for general users.

• 'Meta' is the parent company of Instagram. It runs Facebook and WhatsApp too.

• In support of its claim, The Wire shared screenshots of a supposed internal document of Meta which the news website claims to have accessed.

• This document was a report on the take-down of an Instagram post allegedly "reported" by Malviya.

• The underlying implication here, of course, is that the BJP government is hand in glove with big tech and is unleashing unprecedented censorship on Indian citizens.

Following this, The Wire also published a report which claimed that a Meta executive had sent an internal email to his team asking how the information got leaked. Over the course of the next couple of days, Wire also claimed to have carried out a verification process to prove that the Meta executive email was indeed genuine.

However:

• The two experts cited by Meta in its support washed their hands off the report.

• Even the internal document which The Wire claimed showed Malviya's disproportionate influence in Instagram was called out as a 'spoof' created by Meta's own algorithm by a Meta executive.

Ultimately:

• The Wire retracted its Meta stories.

• In an 'apology' released late night on 26 October, the Wire claimed that it had been 'subjected' to deception by a member of its Meta investigation team.

• This morning, the statement saw a footnote added to it saying that 'The person responsible is no longer working with The Wire in any capacity.'