Fake Twitter Account Posing as Sidhu Calls Pakistan ‘Second Home’
The fake account has only 5.6k followers, while Sidhu’s original handle has over 416k followers.
CLAIM
A tweet, supposedly by Punjab Minister and Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu, is doing the rounds, where he has thanked Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and Army Chief General Bajwa for the opening of the Kartarpur Corridor - while stating that Pakistan is his second home."
The tweet reads:
"Today I have been invited by the Government of Pakistan On the occasion of opening the #KartarpurCorridor.
I am grateful 2Prime Minister Imran khan & Army chief. All Sikh community is thankful 2Pakistan. Pakistan is my second home. And I'll definitely come on this happy occasion.”
At the time of writing, the tweet had garnered over 3.9k retweets and around 27k likes.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The twitter account is fake — Sidhu’s original handle is called @sherryontop.
However, this handle goes by the name @Navjot_Si_Sidhu. Further, the account had only 13 tweets at the time of writing, and has close to 5.6k followers. According to SM HoaxSlayer, the number of followers for the fake account increased from a mere 1,500 to 5.3k within 10 hours.
Another glaring tell is the fact that the account was made only in October 2018, whereas Sidhu has been active on the microblogging site much before that.
Interestingly, the fake account made another tweet at 8:27 am on 26 November which says – “Pakistan is my home.”
At the time of writing, the tweet had 1,000 likes and 122 retweets.
SO, WILL SIDHU ATTEND THE KATARPUR CORRIDOR GROUND BREAKING IN PAKISTAN?
While the tweet shared by the fake twitter account is misleading, Sidhu will be attending the ground breaking ceremony on 28 December in Pakistan.
The Pakistan government, had on 23 November, extended an invitation to Sidhu, EAM Sushma Swaraj and Punjab CM Amarinder Singh.
Accepting the invitation, Sidhu said:
Sidhu added that he has written to the Ministry of External Affairs, seeking permission to attend the ceremony.
Sidhu had earlier received flak, from the Opposition and his own party alike, in August for hugging Pakistan Army General Qamar Javed Baja at PM Imran Khan’s swearing-in ceremony.
(With inputs from SMHoaxSlayer.)
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