NEW DELHI, Oct 27 (Reuters) – The IT chief of India’s ruling party on Thursday said he would sue The Wire for damaging its reputation, weeks after the local media outlet explained in a story that it later retracted that Instagram was without verification has been turned off. all posts he reported.

“Not only will I start the criminal case, but I will also sue them in a civil court for damages for falsifying documents to defame and damage my reputation,” tweeted Amit Malviya of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Instagram parent company Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Technological evidence is more complicated and standard due diligence may not always uncover the fraud committed in a release. This happened to us,” The Wire said in a statement to Reuters.

Malviya’s planned legal action comes after the US social media company and The Wire engaged in a public feud over the past few weeks over the news report and the outlet’s subsequent coverage to bolster its story.

Meta in press releases called before Wire’s reporting is inaccurate and based on documents believed to be “fabricated.” The Wire withdrew all stories last week and issued an apology to readers on Thursday, saying the meta reports in question did not meet its standards.

“Publishing a story that we believed to be reliable without independently verifying the technical evidence supporting it is a failure that we cannot allow to be repeated,” the publication reads said.

In its statement following Malviya’s tweet, Wire added: “Whether the person who brought all the material to The Wire deceived us at the behest of someone else or acted on his own initiative is a matter which will be brought to trial in due course .”

Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in New Delhi Editing by Aditya Kalra and Matthew Lewis

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