Hackers operated Rahul, Cong Twitter handles from 5 countries, including US

The Twitter handles of Rahul Gandhi and the Congress which were recently hacked were operated from five countries including the US, Delhi Police today said.

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW), which is probing the matter, received a reply around three-four days ago from Twitter headquarters on the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used by the hackers to send derogatory tweets from these accounts, a senior police officer said.

"We have got to know that the IP addresses from where the accounts were accessed don't fall under our jurisdiction. The Twitter handle logs show both the accounts were operated from five countries - Sweden, Romania, the US, Canada and Thailand. We will write to the Internet service providers of these countries to share details of users with us and that is how the investigation will proceed," the officer said.

Analysis of the data shows that the accounts were accessed from these countries on November 30 from 9.15 PM to 9.30 PM and from 10:30 AM on December 1, the officer added.

In case, police do not get the necessary details, they might have to initiate the process of sending Letters Rogatory to competent courts in these countries for assistance, sources said.

According to the officer, police are yet to get log details of the Congress website from the party's server.

Police had lodged two FIRs in connection with the hacking of the two Twitter accounts, the party website and the email accounts of Congress and Rahul on December 1 following two complaints from Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala to the EOW.

Rahul's Twitter account was hacked on November 30 and some remarks full of expletives were posted.

On December 1, his email account was also hacked, the party had claimed.

Two cases under section 66 of IT Act were registered, police had said.