A tweet from a fake Twitter account of Sara Pilot, wife of Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot, is going viral on social media. The tweet seems to attack Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, amid the ongoing political turmoil in the state.
News organisation IANS fell for the tweet and published a news report, leading the tweet to be amplified, but in reality, Sara has not tweeted any such thing.
CLAIM
In the tweet, Sara appears to be attacking Gehlot without taking his name, saying that even “big magicians” will start sweating when they (referring to Sachin) turn to Delhi.
The tweet had over 3k retweets and over 17k likes at the time this story was published.
News organisation IANS picked up on this tweet as well as some other tweets by the account tagging Congress, including an old video of Sachin walking with his supporters, and published a news report, claiming that Sara had attacked Gehlot over the political crisis.
Outlook carried the report by IANS.
Free Press Journal, too, carried the news report.
The Quint also found that the tweet was being shared on Facebook as a legitimate one from Sara Pilot.
WHAT WE FOUND
On looking at the actual Twitter account, we saw that despite a large number of followers, the account of ‘Sarah Sachin Pilot’ was not verified.
Moreover, while it calls itself the official account, several spelling errors (Kasmir, Rajsthan, Poltics) in the Twitter bio suggest that it is not really Sara Pilot’s account. Further, the spelling of Sarah is spelled with an ‘h’ when the real spelling is ‘Sara’, according to official documentation.
A Rajasthan-based journalist by the name of Tabeenah Anjum also confirmed on Twitter that the account was fake.
In reality, Sara Pilot is not on Twitter and a fake account in her name has gone viral with a tweet about the current political scenario in Rajasthan.
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