Aug. 31: If the young lady was guilty of “twagerism”, the gentleman was really “tweet” about it.

Wall Street Journal columnist Sadanand Dhume has retracted his accusation of “twagerism” against a beauty pageant contestant, who had lifted whole sentences from his tweets, after Vasuki Sunkavalli claimed she was new to “twitterverse” and didn’t know the correct use of the “retweet” button.

“I wouldn’t read too much into this minor incident,” Dhume said in response to queries from The Telegraph. “Ms. Sunkavalli has clarified the circumstances behind it and I’m happy to take her word. Chapter closed, as far as I’m concerned.”

Dhume’s gesture came less than two months after a 168-year-old British tabloid was forced to close down following a phone-hacking scandal.

Sunkavalli, India’s hopeful for the Miss Universe title, tells her followers she is a “lawyer, model, Miss Universe India, nerd” and until yesterday her Twitter account did, indeed, suggest that she had a varied range of interests.

Her arrival in Brazil for the international finale of the beauty contest was marked with tweets about hair and make-up sessions before the big day.

The Hyderabad girl’s more politically aware followers were assured that she was thinking deeply, too, about the significance of the fast by Anna Hazare. “Seven years of Manmohan Singh in politics proves one thing — a glittering resume is no substitute for basic leadership skills,” she wrote on August 18.

The contestant had already offered a wry summary of the shortcomings of Hazare’s proposed anti-corruption ombudsman. “Only in India can you lead a movement to add an extra layer of unweildy (sic) regulation to fix a problem caused by too much unweildy (sic) regulation.”

Yesterday, she issued a warning to India’s MPs who started parliamentary proceedings against a civil society activist who called them illiterates. And then disaster struck.

Idly browsing the Internet, Dhume came across words that seemed familiar: “Memo to Indian MPs: only banana republics go after private citizens for saying rude things about politicians.”

Dhume’s recognition was not so surprising: he had written the same sentence himself an hour earlier.

Further investigation revealed that seven of Sunkavalli’s 29 tweets bore a strong resemblance to those first posted by the columnist.

His accusation of “twagerism” caused uproar and brought a hot denial from Sunkavalli. “It wasnt (sic) accidental. can’t possibly cut copy AND paste accidentally now can I? just dint (sic) know the technical know how of ‘retweeting’,” she tweeted.

Sunkavalli was unavailable for comment till the time of writing. As of yesterday, her last tweet read: “Loooong day.. And an early start tom. Exhaustion is hitting me.”

Thanks to Dhume, she has been spared further embarrassment too.

The columnist even conceded that Sunkavalli almost certainly looked better than he did in a swimsuit.