Congress heir reluctant Rahul Gandhi’s recent “privilege leave”, as clever headline writers chose to call it, remains shrouded in mystery just like many of his previous vacations away from active politics. After waxing eloquent on how his party is the party of the poor, Gandhi disappeared just in time when Parliament was set to debate the Land Bill, which is likely to impact a vast majority of the rural poor in the country.

Clearly, Gandhi’s love for systems and processes is all hot air considering he has so far spent little time in the Lower House that decides on the systems and processes that govern the country – he was one of the worst performers when it came to attendance in the 15th Lok Sabha.

Given Gandhi’s track record, his recent disappearance was hardly the stuff Breaking News is made of, but trust the mainstream media to turn it into one. Congress sources made it clear that Gandhi had taken leave to reflect on recent events and future course of the party, but that was not enough – after answering the “why”, the media got down to the “where”.

For more than three days #WhereIsRahul has been trending on Twitter and flashing all over news ticker. The mystery was close to being resolved when a certain Congress worker, Jagdish Kumar Sharma, tweeted out pictures early today of Gandhi supposedly camping in Uttarakhand.

Sharma put out a series of pictures claiming that the Congress scion does not always vacation in Bangkok and that he is currently in Uttarakhand.

The images were flashed across TV channels and many in the mainstream media put out reports about Gandhi’s latest “sighting” in Uttarakhand, his camping and holidaying activities. Most channels and news websites simply lapped up the Twitter timeline of an individual to churn out “news” about Gandhi’s whereabouts, even as sources in the Congress dismissed the claim.

While news organisations were quick to use “tweets” as source, none bothered to check the veracity of this so-called Congress worker’s assertions. As it turns out now, the pictures tweeted out by Sharma could very well have been from 2008. Moreover, Sharma is hardly a Congress worker — as some claimed — who could be relied on for accurate information.

At the time of Congress’ brutal drubbing in the Delhi Assembly election, he was spotted outside the party headquarters on Akbar Road chanting slogans in favour of replacing Rahul Gandhi with his younger sister Priyanka Gandhi as party leader.

He even tweeted out pictures of himself with a bunch of protesters agitating against the leadership of Rahul Gandhi.

The Hindu was one of the few media outlets to put out a story stating that Sharma is a self-styled Priyanka supporter with a quote from Congress spokesperson PC Chacko stating that “Mr. Sharma has nothing to do with the party”. None of the reports though go into how Sharma got hold of Gandhi’s images “vacationing” in Uttarakhand in the first place.

Twitter is increasingly becoming a tool for media professionals to gather news and news leads, and there’s little doubt about social-media platforms shaping discourse on current affairs. But it’s foolhardy to rely solely on tweets as a source of news as this case shows.