Recently, on 24 August 2024, Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram, was arrested in Paris over allegations that his platform was being used for illicit activities such as drug trafficking and the distribution of child sexual abuse images (here, here). According to reports, the Telegram messaging app is under intense scrutiny in India due to its alleged role in various criminal activities (here, here, and here). In this context, a screenshot purportedly showing a tweet dated 26 August 2024 from the official X (formerly Twitter) handle of Indian Prime Minister Modi, denouncing the news of a Telegram ban in India and assuring that Telegram will not be banned, is being circulated on social media (here, here, and here). In this article, let’s fact-check the authenticity of the tweet.
Claim: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, denouncing the news of a Telegram ban in India and assuring that Telegram will not be banned.
Fact: The Indian Prime Minister Modi did not tweet assuring that Telegram would not be banned in India. An analysis conducted using a Twitter analytics tool confirmed this. The viral screenshot has been digitally manipulated. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Despite the viral screenshot closely resembling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official Twitter account, it is a digitally manipulated image and PM Modi has not posted any such tweet assuring that Telegram will not be banned in India. A search of Prime Minister Modi’s official X (formerly Twitter) account did not reveal any tweet matching the content of the viral tweet dated 26 August 2024.
Moreover, we can observe discrepancies between the viral screenshot of the purported tweet by PM Modi dated 26 August 2024 and the typical posts on X (formerly Twitter). The time in the viral tweet does not include AM or PM, which indicates that the tweet is digitally edited.
Furthermore, social media analytics tools like Social Blade indicate that PM Modi made only six tweets on 26 and 27 August 2024. All six tweets are currently visible on PM Modi’s account. These findings strongly suggest that the alleged tweet may never have existed, effectively ruling out the possibility that it was deleted.
Moreover, if Prime Minister Modi had indeed tweeted assuring that Telegram would not be banned in India, it would have been reported by several media outlets. However, no such reports were found, further confirming that the viral screenshot is digitally manipulated. Any such announcement by the PM would also be released as an official press release on the website of the Press Information Bureau (PIB). However, no such release is available on the PIB portal.
To sum up, Prime Minister Modi did not post on his X (formerly Twitter) account assuring that Telegram will not be banned in India; the viral screenshot is fake.
