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A tweet by Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje over the death of a man allegedly lynched by civic officials has generated a new controversy with several fake Twitter accounts speaking in defence of the state government.
Civic body officials in Rajasthan’s Pratapgarh have denied that they assaulted Zafar Khan on 16 June, leading to his death, after he objected to them taking photographs of women defecating in the open, the Indian Express reported. Khan’s death has sparked concerns about growing incidents of locals taking law and order into their hands.
Raje’s 18 June tweet, which received 388 replies at the time of writing this story, received many angry responses, most of which criticised her for using the word ‘demise’, which implied that Zafar Khan died of natural causes, a statement corroborated by local police to BOOM.
Anand Shrivastava, Inspector General of Police, Udaipur Range, told BOOM that police had set up a medical board comprising five doctors, who ruled that Zafar Khan died due to cardio respiratory failure.
Among angry replies to the chief minister’s tweet, two Twitter handles stood out, Aashif Khan (@kaashif752) and one Juned Khan (@juned45658)
Aashif Khan kept replying to Raje’s tweet, arguing with others who replied on the thread and insisted that Zafar Khan’s death was caused by a heart attack.
However, Aashif Khan is a fake account that has stolen a picture of Sandeep Amar, Chief Executive of Indian Express Digital.
BOOM found a November 2012 article that carried Sandeep Amar’s image. We contacted Amar, who confirmed that his picture has been misused and that he reached out to Twitter to take appropriate action against the account.
We do not know the real identities of the people operating these fake accounts.
(This article was first published on BOOMLive and has been republished with permission.)
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