In some embarrassment for the Goa unit of the Congress party, a journalist named Barnabe Sapeco “accidentally” shared a pornographic clip in the official WhatsApp group the party maintains for communicating with the media. The incident, which happened on Saturday, seems to be turning out to be a subject of amusement for many.
According to the report, photojournalist Barnabe Sapeco forwarded a video to the WhatsApp group. That itself might have been a bit unnatural as the group is used by the party, to send out press statements and press conference invites to journalists, not the other way round.
The video turned out to be a porn clip, which caused a lot of hullabaloo among the 80 odd members in the group that comprises both the journalists and Congress leaders.
The chief spokesperson of the Goa Congress Sunil Kawthankar, who is also the admin of that group, promptly sprung into damage control mode. Terming it a serious issue, the admin stated that he had removed Barnabe Sapeco from the group. He also claimed to have apologised to all the other members, and reiterated that such an irresponsible act was highly objectionable and could not be tolerated.
Barnabe Sapeco, who apparently is also a former General Secretary of the Goa Congress, on his part claimed that he shared the porn clip by accident. He claimed that he was sent that video by someone and later it accidentally got forwarded to the WhatsApp group. He also apologised for the ‘inconvenience’ caused.
This isn’t the only time the Congress party has been involved in a WhatsApp related gaffe. Recently the Meerut district president of the Congress party was removed from all positions of the party after he was found using the word Pappu in a message he had composed about Rahul Gandhi.
The ironical thing was that he hadn’t bore any ill will towards Rahul Gandhi while using that word, and was actually trying to sarcastically attack Rahul’s opponents using it.