Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Saturday threw his weight behind comedy group AIB, which landed in a controversy for making a caricature of PM Modi, by posting a picture of him using the Snapchat filter.
Comedy group AIB recently made a meme out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's photo. The photo had him looking at his phone while waiting at a railway station. AIB's meme showed this photo, juxtaposed with a close up of Modi's face with a dog's ears and snout - a face filter which can be applied using Snapchat app.
An FIR was filed against the group for obscenity and criminal defamation, which came under ridicule from many on social media.
Tharoor posted the picture, accompanied by the message, "Attention all trolls: I took the #dogfilter challenge!"
Attn all trolls: I took the #DogFilter challenge! @AllIndiaBakchod pic.twitter.com/0lmClCS7CF
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) July 15, 2017
Before Tharoor however, Derek O' Brien, Trinamool Congress MP, had also posted a similar Instagram picture with a dog filter on Friday.
He was responding to a Vijay Nair, OML founder, who tweeted that any politician who posts a picture with a dog filter would get his vote. Another Twitter user tagged O’Brien asking him to "be a sport" and to post a similar selfie.
AIB is no stranger to controversy though.
In May last year, the group ran into trouble for a video it posted, which featured Tanmay Bhat transposing the faces of Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar onto his face, and playing out a fictional conversation between them.
An enquiry was ordered against Bhat by the Mumbai police after a BJP leader accused him of ridiculing the two well-known personalities.
On an earlier occasion, in 2015, the group was booked for obscenity charges for the infamous roast of Bollywood actors Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh.