Who dared deface our first PM’s Wiki wall?

MUMBAI, INDIA: As if people are not happy pulling each other’s hair, someone has done dirty with the dead.

Shocking reports in the media reveal that unidentified person or persons have defaced the Wiki wall of none other than our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

The imposters tweaked the information on Nehru and revised it to mention that Nehru's grandfather Gangadhar Nehru was a Muslim.

According to the Times of India, salacious details of his affair with Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of India's first governor general, Lord Mountbatten, were also added to his page. Similar edits were made on the pages of Gangadhar's son Motilal Nehru, TOI said.

The malicious edits stated, "Gangadhar was born as a Muslim by the name of Ghiasuddin Ghazi but changed his name to a Hindu Ganga Dhar to escape British clutches."

The controversy started with a post on Nehru’s Wiki wall on 26 June. @AnonGoIWPEdits, a Twitter handle which tracks all anonymous edits of English Wikipedia (ie, w/o editor being logged in) from a wide range of Government of India IP addresses, first reported the revision.

Later, in an interview to ToI, Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Creator of the tracking software, said, “All this shows that it is an IP address provided by National Informatics Centre (NIC). It doesn't say anything more than that."

He added that it was difficult to identify the user as the users to the NIC network could not be identified.

These edits were later deleted by volunteer editors of Wikipedia.

While the issue has turmoiled into a political storm, what is more frightening is that a hacker can easily hack into the well protected NIC server, deface a former PM's wall, and get away. Where is the much touted security?