Parody animation of PM Modi posted by ‘The Wire’ blocked on social media
The news outlet’s Instagram account was also reportedly unavailable in India for almost two hours on Monday evening.
Social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and X have blocked a parody animation posted by news outlet The Wire.
Its Instagram account was also reportedly unavailable in India for nearly two hours on Monday evening.
Visitors to the page saw a message stating that the page was “not available” in India because the platform was complying with “a legal request to restrict this content”.
The account was accessible only to users outside India or those using virtual private networks, The Wire reported.
The 52-second animated video, which was uploaded to Instagram, Facebook and X at about 6.30 pm on Saturday was blocked on all three platforms. As of 3 pm on Tuesday, The Wire’s Instagram account had been restored, though the parody animation remained inaccessible on all three sites.
The animation satirised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly avoiding questions in Parliament about an unpublished memoir by former Indian Army chief MM Naravane.
Since February 2, the proceedings in the Lok Sabha have disrupted several times with the Opposition protesting against Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi not being allowed to quote an excerpt from Naravane’s memoir about the political decision-making during the 2020 border tensions between India and China.
On February 5, the Lok Sabha passed the Motion of Thanks on the president’s address without Modi giving his customary reply, as Opposition MPs continued their protest. This was the first time since 2004 that the prime minister has not replied to the Motion of Thanks in the Lower House.
Birla had said that he had urged the prime minister not to come to the Lok Sabha to avoid a “mishap”.
I call upon all readers to widely share this cartoon. “I want this government to be criticised. Criticism makes democracy stronger”, @narendramodi once claimed. But this cartoon in The Wire by ‘56 Productions’ has obviously unnerved the Dear Leader because he got @AshwiniVaishnaw… https://t.co/Vfl2IQHg53
— Siddharth (@svaradarajan) February 9, 2026
On Monday, The Wire claimed that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting told the news outlet that it had not specifically ordered the blocking of its account.
The news outlet however claimed that it had “learned informally that the ministry asked Meta to block a 52-second satirical cartoon on Instagram” and that the platform’s parent company had blocked the entire account “in error”.
Under the Information Technology Act, the Union government is required to inform a publisher in advance before blocking specific content. The Wire has claimed that it had received no written communication on the matter.
