Musk apologizes after mocking physically-challenged Twitter employee

San Francisco: Twitter CEO Elon Musk has apologised after publicly mocking a physically-challenged employee who was unsure if he had been fired by the company.

On Tuesday, Haraldur Thorleifsson, who goes by "Halli" and has muscular dystrophy, tweeted that it was uncertain if he was still employed by the micro-blogging platform as he failed to get a response from the company's HR department.

So, Musk took an exit interview of the employee on the platform which went viral, with many people finding Twitter CEO's attitude rude and disrespectful.

Musk also had said that "the reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm. Can't say I have a lot of respect for that".

However, on Wednesday, the tech billionaire claimed that he did a video call with Halli to "figure out what's real vs what I was told" and mentioned that it is "better to talk to people than communicate via tweet".

He further apologised to Halli for misunderstanding the situation and said that "it was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful. He is considering remaining at Twitter".

With inputs from agencies