On June 20, Alt News co-founder Pratik Sinha had deleted 19 tweets from his official Twitter handle, ‘Free_Thinker’. It was the same day when netizens had started digging hinduphobic tweets of both Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair and Sinha. On that day, Zubair deleted 28 tweets from his verified Twitter handle, Zoo_Bear.
Which tweets were deleted?
It is unclear which tweets were deleted by Pratik on June 20. However, it is noteworthy that since netizens started pointing out the duo’s hinduphobic tweets, their Twitter activity has decreased. While Zubair deleted his Facebook page, both of them had reduced posting content on Twitter.
If we look at the 30-day stats of their tweets, Zubair, at one point in June, had published over 200 Tweets. That was the time when he was running a smear campaign against BJP’s former spokesperson Nupur Sharma. Notably, on June 4, Zubair deleted 15 tweets, and on June 14, he deleted four tweets. However, the drastic step of deleting over 100 Tweets came only after he was arrested.
Similarly, in the case of Pratik, on June 4, he deleted four tweets, and on the next day, five tweets went missing from his profile. He had been consistently posting 8-10 tweets every day till June 20. After that, he did not post more than five tweets except on the day Zubair was arrested.
OpIndia had reported that over 128 tweets had gone missing from Zubair’s Twitter account in a matter of days. While 28 tweets were deleted on June 20, the remaining hundred tweets were deleted from June 27 to June 29, out of which 88 were deleted while he was in Police custody.
The sudden increase in followers count of Zubair
It is also noteworthy that during the time he was dog-whistling Nupur, he was gaining followers anywhere between 1,500 to 26,000 on a daily basis from June 6 to June 15. On June 6, he gained over 26,000 followers, and on June 7, he gained over 10,000 new followers. After that, the new follower count dropped under 1,000.
On the day he was in Police custody, over 24,000 new handles followed him on Twitter. A person who gets less than 1,000 followers daily suddenly gained thousands of followers daily for over ten days in a month.
Police to investigate ‘social media brigade’
A Police officer investigating Zubair’s case said that Police would investigate the ‘social media brigade that Zubair has’. The Police officer said, “It appears that his tweets are planned and pushed in a concerted manner. They are amplified by an army of people. If these are bots, then who is paying these bots. We are digging deep into this network that amplifies his tweets.”
