Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Twitter account was hacked temporarily in the early hours of Sunday as it posted a confusing message claiming India has adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender while also sharing a link promising Bitcoin giveaway, following a similar breach in September.

"The Twitter handle of PM @narendramodi was very briefly compromised. The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account has been immediately secured," the Prime Minister's Office confirmed in a statement posted from the official Twitter handle @PMOIndia.

"In the brief period that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored," It added.

Read also: Twitter account of Indian PM Modi's personal website apparently hacked

The Indian Express newspaper, citing sources from India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology reported that the Indian Computer Emergency Response System (Cert-In) has launched a "full-scale investigation headed by a senior official" and will submit its report to the ministry soon.

Earlier on Sunday at 2:14 am local time, Modi's Twitter account put out a tweet saying India has officially adopted Bitcoin as a legal tender, and that the government had bought 500 Bitcoins, which it was distributing to all residents of the country. 

The malicious tweet, now deleted, also shared a web link to a Bitcoin giveaway blog, urging readers to "hurry up." It ended with a postscript saying: "The future has come today!"

The use of Bitcoin giveaway link in the current incident is also intriguing as India mulls a bill in the parliament to ban private cryptocurrencies and launch its own digital currency.

Read also: India to ban private cryptocurrencies, float official digital currency

Following the tweet, many Twitter users including officials from India's Opposition political parties, shared the screenshots of the malicious tweet suspecting the account was #hacked. 

"Good Morning Modi ji, Sab Changa Si (Is everything well)?," Srinivas BV, the national president of the Indian Youth Congress, tweeted.

"Was the Twitter account of the Hon'ble PM shri #NarendraModi ji hacked? And promise of #Bitcoin!!" tweeted political activist Tehseen Poonawalla. 

Poonawalla also linked the hacking incident to suggest that India's electronic voting machines (EVMs) could be similarly "compromised," taking a potshot at Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party that has been constantly accused by the Opposition parties of winning elections by EVM tampering or hacking.

#Hacked was trending in India. Some users also warned not to click on the Bitcoin giveaway link from the malicious tweet. 

Twitter meanwhile said that after investigating the matter at its own end it concluded that Modi's account "was not compromised due to any breach of Twitter's systems."

"We have 24X7 open lines of communication with the PM's Office and our teams took necessary steps to secure the compromised account as soon as we became aware of this activity. Our investigation has revealed that there are no signs of any other impacted accounts at this time," a Twitter spokesperson told Indian Express.

With 73.4 million Twitter followers, Modi is currently the most followed world leader on the social messaging platform. Modi's personal account was also hacked in September this year, with a series of tweets requesting followers to donate to a relief fund through Bitcoins. 

Many Indian Twitter users are therefore expressing genuine concerns over the security of social media platforms in general amid speculations of a cyber breach of government domains in India.

Journalist Anisha Dutta hinted about a "massive cyber breach within the NIC (National Informatics Centre)" and India's government domain "gov.in" since February this year. "It began with compromised Gov email ids targeting top Govt officials. NIC insisted that no breaches happened. Raises big questions now that even PM's account was breached!," she tweeted on Sunday.

India has faced a number of incidents of cyber breaches in over the past year. Reporting for Hindustan Times in February, Dutta along with another colleague wrote an exclusive piece, citing government officials, that suggested a number of senior Indian government officials, including those from the ministries of defense and external affairs, were targeted in a phishing campaign that month, with the attackers using compromised government domain email accounts to launch their hacking attempts.

Later in July, India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology assured the parliament that there was no such breach in the government's official email system maintained by NIC, despite several cybersecurity incidents reported over the past year.

The hacking of Modi's Twitter handle will keep the debates over cybersecurity in India alive in the times to come.