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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter Account Gets Hacked

A tweet was sent from PM Modi's account with a URL falsely stating that India had officially adopted Bitcoin as the legal tender.

<div class="paragraphs"><p>Narendra Modi. (Photographer: T. Narayan/Bloomberg)</p></div>
Narendra Modi. (Photographer: T. Narayan/Bloomberg)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Twitter handle was "very briefly compromised", his office said on early Sunday morning, adding that the account has been restored shortly after.

The account using the handle @narendramodi, which has over has over 7.3 crore followers on the microblogging site, since been restored after the brief incident, the Prime Minister’s office said in a tweet.

“The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account has been immediately secured,” it said. “In the brief period that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored.”

Before the account was secured, a tweet was sent from PM's account with a URL falsely stating that India had officially adopted Bitcoin as the legal tender, and that the country has bought 500 BTC which it would distribute to citizens.

This comes as India is yet to recognise Bitcoin as a currency in the country, and is working on a bill, with some tweaks, which had proposed banning all private cryptocurrencies. Last month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that the the government had no proposal to recognize Bitcoin as a currency in the country.

Last year, the Twitter account for the personal website of PM Modi's was hacked by an unknown group, and asked followers to donate cryptocurrency to a relief fund.