Fake Twitter Account Posing as Sprinter Dutee Chand Fooled Many
Chand took to her official handle to call out the phony account.
Ever since 100-metre sprint champion Dutee Chand revealed that she was in a same-sex relationship, becoming the first openly gay Indian athlete, she has been making headlines.
An account, with the handle @Dutee_Chand, is at the centre of the latest controversy surrounding the sprinter. A cached version of the account can be seen below.
The account, earlier named 'Dutee Chand', has about 1,510 followers and had been tagged by several people on Twitter, when they commended her for supposedly standing up to the media over its coverage of her relationship.
Speaking in first person, the account had slammed journalists and the media for digging for information about her partner and not respecting their relationship.
However, Chand recently took to Twitter via her account, which she confirmed to The Quint as her official handle, to call @Dutee_Chand out for impersonating her.
Chand’s original account was later verified by Twitter with a ‘blue tick.’
Incidentally, around the same time, the handle, which had till then carried the name ‘Dutee Chand’, switched to ‘Dutee Chand Fan Club’.
This move presumably comes after the fake account had taken to slamming the media by indirectly involving the Prime Minister in a tweet.
The now-fan club account was first created in September 2018, and the first tweet from this account was regarding the sprinter's relationship.
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