New Delhi, March 21 -- A US federal jury in California on Friday found that world's richest billionaire Elon Musk liable for claims that he misled Twitter shareholders by trying to pull down the social media company's share price so he could renegotiate or back out of a $44 billion deal in 2022. The jury, however, absolved him of charges that Musk was engaged in a "scheme" to defraud investors.

The civil trial in San Francisco saw jurors in the federal court agreeing that Musk intentionally misled Twitter shareholders by posting two tweets and saying on a podcast in May 2022 that Twitter had too many fake accounts, and tried to back out of the deal.

The jury decided that this was intentionally done to defraud Twitter shareholders, who s...