As a purported congratulatory letter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and other judges of the bench which delivered Ayodhya judgement went viral on social media, the government was quick to deny that any such letter was written.
“No such letter has been written. The letter is fake and malicious,” tweeted Principal Director General of PIB K S Dhatwalia on Friday, with a screenshot of the letter, marked 'FAKE'.
On Wednesday, Indian High Commission in Dhaka had cautioned people against the fake letter circulating in Bangladesh. The High Commission said that the act of circulating this fake letter is motivated by the desire to create misunderstanding about India in the public domain.
The purported letter addressed to Chief Justice Gogoi dated November 11 two days after the verdict, showed the prime minister praising the judges for their commendable contribution to the cause of Hindu Rashtra through the Ram temple judgement.
This is not the first time that a fake PMO letter has come out. Last month, the CBI had booked one S P Srinivasan Rao in Banalore on allegations of impersonating himself as an official of the PMO and writing a letter to the justice department, seeking probe against a judge. The agency claimed to have recovered many such forged letters after a raid on his residence. The CBI registered the case after the PMO lodged a formal complaint.
In March this year, the CBI registered cases against a person based in Mumbai and a Chennai-based power company for using forged letters in the name of PMO that was written to different government establishments to allegedly further their personal interests.
In December 2018, a science graduate from Belagavi in Karnataka was arrested by the local police for forging Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s signature on a fake PMO letterhead to get a government job as a typist.