On September 7, Alt News’ co-founder and alleged fact-checker Mohammed Zubair published a long thread to counter the FIR registered against him by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa for propagating that Indians called Indian Cricketer Arshdeep Singh a ‘Khalistani’. However, his attempts were flattened by the Twitter user The Hawk Eye.
Zubair claimed that the FIR was registered against him for “calling out hate”. Zubair tried to counter Sirsa’s allegations by saying that he tweeted an hour after Arshdeep dropped the catch. He targeted a famous Twitter handle, MrSinha_ alleging he also used the term ‘Khalistani’. Interestingly, Sinha did not call Arshdeep a ‘Khalistani’, which was the actual controversy.
Sinha had pointed out that Kings XI Punjab’s official handle was cheering for the Pakistani team, but he did not call Arshdeep a Khalistani anywhere. There was a web archive link to the tweet, but the archive link said that the particular link was not archived. Sinha also countered Zubair and said he was not referring to Arshdeep but Kings XI’s Twitter handle. The misleading tweet by Zubair led to a troll attack on Sinha.
He further claimed that the abuses with the word Khalistani were thrown toward Arshdeep by both Indians and Pakistanis. However, Hawkeye specifically pointed out how the word Khalistani trended after his Tweet. He said, “Reiterating. K-word was NOT trending before you amplified within 45 minutes by picking random handles because Right Wing handles you are citing now didn’t get a space in your collage! And why skipping data of Google trend, Wiki page alteration and two Pak influencers and Dunya channel who initiated it?”
The Hawk Eye published a few screenshots with the tweet. In the first screenshot, it was clear that before Zubair’s tweet, there were less than 500 tweets using the word Khalistani. However, within an hour of his tweet, it jumped to over 1,000 and kept rising and finally reached over 16,000 by 3:30 PM the next day.
As per the Google Trends Map, Pakistan’s contribution to the whole controversy of propagating the word Khalistani was 46%. UAE 20%, India 17%, and Qatar 7%.
It is also noteworthy that journalist of Pakistani origin WS Khan had tweeted that Arshdeep could be a part of the Pakistan-backed Khalistani movement just 3 minutes after he dropped the catch. Also, Pakistani influencer Osama who goes by the handle ashaqueens had said Arshdeep should support the Khalistani movement as he could not go to India after dropping the catch. The tweet was made 12 minutes after the catch was dropped.
Another important aspect of the whole controversy is that Zubair had intentionally searched the word “Khalistani”, which is evident by the fact that all his screenshots have that particular word in bold. It only happens when you are taking screenshots of the tweets from the search results on Twitter.
Arshdeep’s Wikipedia page was vandalized
It is noteworthy that someone using a Pakistani IP address had vandalized the Wikipedia page of Arshdeep Singh. Though it was reverted back, the screenshots of the changed page made it to social media, and it was propagated as if someone from India had done that. IT Ministry has initiated an enquiry into the matter and called Wikipedia’s India officials for an explanation.