CHENNAI: An "irrelevant" comment by the Twitter handle of the Chennai city police on a beef dish picture, landed police personnel in the soup on Thursday.
On Wednesday night, A Abubacker of Vellore, a final-year law student and functionary of Naam Thamizhar Katchi, posted a picture of a beef dish on his Twitter handle with the caption, 'maattu kari' (beef) in Tamil.
On Thursday morning, the city police official Twitter handle commented on the post --- 'such posts are irrelevant here' (loose translation).
Soon the police site was flooded with comments questioning the police for its comments on personal food choice of an individual. Several members of the Naam Thamizhar Katchi questioned as to how the city police can comment about an untagged post.
Few other netizens started posting pictures of beef food with captions such as 'the best kind of meat' and 'are you going to question me as well?'. Meanwhile, as the debate raged on, a few right-wing group members waded in with comments supporting police.
The Chennai city police deleted the post after nearly three hours of online slugfest but the screenshot of the comments went viral on social media.
A police officer said the comment was an inadvertent mistake. "On Thursday night, the post by Abubacker was accidentally retweeted by our handle. The police personnel who started his shift on Friday morning noticed the post on the timeline and believed that the Chennai police were tagged by the user. The personnel commented without rechecking if the official handle was tagged or not," the police officer said.
Police online team also posted a clarification on the incident and apologised for the miscommunication. Meanwhile, Abubacker speaking to a YouTube channel, said that he suspect the comment must have been posted by police either because of his identity or because of his choice of food.