New Delhi: The Insaf Students Federation (ISF), the student wing of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party, allegedly played a key role in spreading fake news and projecting the Delhi riots as “anti-Muslim genocide”, an intelligence report by the Delhi Police has claimed.
The report titled ‘Fake News in Social Media in Delhi Protests’ has been prepared by the Special Branch of the Delhi Police. It claims that over 100 accounts of the ISF’s social media wing, mostly created under Hindu names, were active during the riots and even spread panic and rumours on 1 March, in the aftermath of the communal violence, by claiming that there was fresh trouble in South-East and West Delhi.
The report, accessed by this writer, states that the trending hashtag, which propagated the “genocide of Muslims” narrative on 27 February was initiated by @thegayvirus, an account created in Pakistan on 2 February.
“The system recorded external meddling by Pakistan to create a proxy war in the country, making it ‘anti-Muslim genocide’ by creating trending hashtags,” the report reads. “The account of anti-Indian influencer, Zaid Hamid, is withheld in India. However, his tweets have been spread across the country using bot/troll accounts.”
The report adds that the ongoing Delhi protests and incidents have been coloured in an anti-Muslim narrative. “The recent incident of rumor mongering and the havoc it can create was recorded in West Delhi on 1 March 2020 resulting in great panic and distress,” it says.
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The Twitter accounts
A number of Twitter accounts identified as those spreading fake news of violence in West Delhi have been deleted. The report names some of the accounts that allegedly spread rumours in the aftermath of the violence.
They include @IIntellect97, @hpuser2911, @nehagupta92, @LakraLarry, @Kamakhya_p, @AyaanKh11177329, @Ajitkum42599179, @Shine99245865, @SachinKhemani2.
According to the report, the ISF also created several anti-Indian hashtags, many of which trended on social media. “A trending anti-India hashtag with fake information #RSS_killingmuslims was actually created as a part of extended cyber propaganda against India,” says the report.
One key Pakistan-based account that allegedly spread hatred on Twitter was identified as @hpuser2911. Another active account spreading fake information and instigating content was identified as @IIntellect97 by the report. “It had bot-like activity as there were over 800 tweets every day from this account,” the report states.
It also claims that the Pakistan-based Twitter account @pain___killer created the hashtag #DelhiMuslimGenocide. “This account had more than 2000 followers on Twitter,” it adds.
The report also identified Zaid Zaman Hamid as one of the alleged key influencers in creating anti-India propaganda during the riots. “The Pakistan-based self-acclaimed defence analyst whose account is withheld in India is still working to create hysteria in India using the retweets,” it adds.
The report further claims that one of the first instances of fake news of violence in West Delhi on 1 March was propagated by @ZaidZamanHamid.
Fake images spread through Pak handles: Report
Several fake images were created and spread through Pakistan-based social media handles, according to the report.
The report states that ‘@Imsatyamkr’, a handle allegedly based in Pakistan but created under a Hindu name, shared fake information of bullets being fired at Tilak Nagar Metro Station on 1 March.
Another Pakistan-based fake account @Ajitkum42599179 was created on 1 March and it tweeted fake news about violence in west and south-east Delhi, the report adds.
Images from Syria and Bangladesh of victims of police atrocities were peddled as pictures from ground zero in the Delhi riots, the report claims, adding one such image was tracked to have been shared more than 32,000 times on Facebook.
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The writer is CEO of Indraprastha Vishwa Samvad Kendra, a RSS affiliate, and author of two books on the RSS.