Designer claims he received request to make table for PM, cops say it was forged

A designer named Kunal Merchant took to social media claiming that he received an email from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office asking him to design a table from the PM, which he rejected. However, the Delhi police said on Friday that the purported email was a case of forgery and that the matter is under investigation.

The official Twitter handle of the Commissioner of Police, Delhi, has stated that they have received a complaint regarding forgery, impersonation, and identity fraud of an office bearer at the Prime Minister’s Office. The matter is under investigation, the CP tweeted.

Screenshots that Kunal Merchant shared on his Instagram stories (which disappear after 24 hours) on Friday showed that he received a purported email from Vivek Kumar, private secretary to PM Modi on April 12, informing Merchant that he has been chosen to “design and build a permanent installation/exclusive table for exclusive use by the Prime Minister”.

In his response to the supposed email from the PMO office, while thanking the private secretary for, the designer said that is respectfully declining the opportunity. Kunal Merchant also emphasized that he believes in a secular, plural, tolerant and civilisational force that has a 7,000-year-old ”record of accepting” ’outsiders’ (a term BJP used to talk of Indian Muslim kings in history).

Note: The story was taken based on Kunal Merchant’s Instagram story. It has been updated with the police version.