Sikkim chief minister P. S. Tamang (Golay)’s official Facebook account was hacked on late Saturday before it was secured past midnight after a complaint was lodged with the India office of the social media company.
A source said the account — Prem Singh Tamang-Golay — went off Facebook around 5pm, and reappeared about 9.15pm with an image of a girl in the profile picture in place of that of the chief minister’s. “We eventually managed to get complete control of the account between 12.30am and 1am today (Sunday), thanks to the help of Facebook’s India office,” said the source.
However, the posts from December 27 to Saturday were deleted and could not be retrieved. Four staff members of the chief minister’s office are understood to be handling Golay’s account, which is regularly updated with the details and pictures of his official engagements and other messages.
The source said the identity of the girl whose image was inserted in the profile picture could not be immediately ascertained. “The same image can be found in the profile picture of a person named A. J. Styles, but it is for the investigators to connect the dots,’ the source said.
Tenzing Loden Lepcha, the superintendent of police of Sikkim police’s cyber cell, said an FIR had been registered at the Sadar police station in Gangtok in connection with the hacking and the matter was being investigated. “We are working on it. The case has been registered under the IT Act. The page has since been reinstated after contacting the nodal officer for Facebook in India,” he said, adding that the police were confident of establishing the identity of the culprit within the next few days.
