Impersonator Account of Cannes Grand Prix Winner Payal Kapadia Crops Up

This account, before impersonating Kapadia on X, had several different usernames.

Fact-Check | This handle t is impersonating Payal Kapadia and is not her real account.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia made history after she won the country's first-ever Grand Prix Award at the 77th Cannes Film Festival with the Malayalam-Hindi film All We Imagine as Light.

Gist of the matter: Following this, an X (formerly Twitter) handle with Kapadia's name started replying to congratulatory messages shared by several prominent accounts, such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress' Rahul Gandhi.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

An archive of the post can be found here. 

Media organisations, such as NDTV and ABP Live, too shared posts based on the account's response to PM Modi and Gandhi.

You can view an archive of the report here.

You can view an archive of the post here.

But...: The problem with these claims are that the said X account is actually impersonating Kapadia and is not her real account. The same handle was previously known with several other names.

How did we find out?: On going through the account's 'replies section', we found that several of them were focused on Bihar politics and showed a handle named 'braveofthebihar'.

Some of the replies that were shared by the account.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

Next, we searched for the handle and found that other names such as 'Jamia Salafia' and 'Payal Kapadial' showed up in the results. This proved that the username of the account was changed multiple times.

Here are the results we got after searching for the username.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

Team WebQoof searched the 'replies section' further and found a post shared by the same X account, where the username was identified as '@K_L_SharmaINC'.

The account's username was changed multiple times.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

This account was called out by several users on the platform, who asked others not to fall for the impersonator account. We noticed that the account in question then added a line in the bio clarifying that it was a parody account of Kapadia.

The bio reflects that it is a parody account.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

Conclusion: This account is impersonating Kapadia and is not her actual account.

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