A fake Twitter account of Bollywood actor Naseeruddin Shah has cropped up with as many as 49,500 people following it at the time of publishing the article.
We found several red flags in the said Twitter profile that is spreading misinformation, to ascertain that it’s an imposter account, not an official one.
WHAT IS THE FAKE ACCOUNT TWEETING?
- Pro-farmers’ protests tweets:
We found several tweets favouring the farmers’ protests with one of them claiming that the agitation will never end.
- Questions on those calling farmers ‘anti-nationals’:
Another tweet claims to take a dig at those who are calling farmers demanding for Minimum Support Price (MSP) as ‘anti-nationals’.
- Shares false claims, misinformation
In a tweet shared on 29 January, the account holder also shared misinformation that 200 Delhi police officials had resigned. The Quint’s WebQoof team had debunked this claim that was being shared along with a video in which police officers could be heard chanting ‘jai jawan, jai kisan’.
The Delhi Police Public Relations Officer (PRO) had then told us that the claim was ‘fake.’ The video actually showed the police official motivating other personnel to engage with the farmers peacefully during the Republic Day rally.
- Appeals to subscribe to ‘Team Kisan’ YouTube handle:
The said imposter account also appealed to the users to subscribe to a YouTube channel in the name of ‘Team Kisan’. In a tweet the user wrote — this is my YouTube channel, please subscribe it.
HOW DO WE KNOW IT’S FAKE?
We found that the said imposter account’s earlier Twitter handle was ‘@RakeshTkaite’.
A user had tagged ‘@RakeshTkaite’ in a tweet shared on Sunday, 7 February. On clicking the said handle, we found that the account details of Naseeruddin’s fake account appears.
The same happened with a tweet shared on 31 January that had mentioned ‘@RakeshTkaite’ in it.
It is pertinent to note that this is not the official handle of Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait either. A spokesman from BKU (Tikait) had earlier confirmed to us that @RakeshTikaitBKU is his official Twitter handle.
As per the bio of the fake account, it was created in July 2019.
Ratna Pathak Shah, Naseeruddin Shah’s wife, confirmed to The Quint’s WebQoof team that the actor does not have any Twitter account.
We had earlier debunked another fake account which existed in Naseeruddin Shah’s name.
The imposter account also has factual inaccuracy — the actor has been misspelt in Twitter handle of the account. The actor’s spelling is Naseeruddin Shah, however, the Twitter handle spells itself as ‘@naseruddin_shah.’
Evidently, ‘@naseruddin_shah’ is an imposter Twitter account of Bollywood actor Naseeruddin Shah.
(Editor’s note: The story has been updated to include actor Ratna Pathak Shah’s response to the imposter Twitter account.)
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