Amid the ongoing political crisis in the ruling Congress party in Rajasthan, where reportedly deputy CM Sachin Pilot is rebelling and is camping in Delhi with around 25 MLAs, news agency IANS published a story saying that Sachin Pilot’s wife Sarah Pilot has attacked the state CM on Twitter. But the news agency mistook a fake account to be real account of Sarah.
The story, which was published by several news houses, said that Sarah Pilot posted a series of tweets directed at Rajasthan CM. The report quoted Sarah Pilot as saying that big magicians have started sweating when we go to Delhi, apparently referring to Ashok Gehlot as magician. It also mentioned that she said that for six years somebody struggled on roads in Rajasthan but when the moment came, Jaichand started taking advantage and usurped the throne.
The IANS report didn’t link or embed any of the tweets of Sarah Pilot. But the same tweets which were mentioned in the report were found in the Twitter account with the name Sarah Sachin Pilot, the account name of which is @SarahSachin. The tweets are in Hindi, but the content is same as the IANS report, which means that the report was based on this account.
Hindi news portal Newstract also published a report independently on the basis of the tweets, and they embedded the tweets from the account.
But a glance at the Twitter account shows that it is not the real account of Sarah Pilot, wife Sachin Pilot and daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir CM Farooq Abdullah. The account was created in March 2019, but the account is not verified. Moreover, the account is neither followed by Sachin Pilot nor by Omar Abdullah, her brother, who is active on Twitter. The bio also mentions “RoyalPilot family with indian Poltics”, which is highly suspect. Therefore, it can be concluded that the account is fake.
Tabeenah Anjum, a journalist from Rajasthan, also confirmed that the Twitter account does not belong to Sarah Pilot. She asked media houses to not use tweets from the account to published reports, and said that she was surprised to see tweets from this account making it to mainstream news and agency stories.
