Multiple fake Twitter profiles have emerged in the name of Surat cop, Sunita Yadav, who offered to resign from her position and was reportedly transferred following a departmental inquiry constituted against her after she stopped the son of a minister in the Gujarat government and his friends for violating the night curfew.
On 9 July, Gujarat's Minister of State for Health Kumar Kanani’s son Prakash Kanani and his friends were reportedly travelling in a car without masks when Yadav stopped them and an argument ensued between Kanani’s friend and Yadav.
Ever since, these profiles have been tweeting about Yadav’s resignation and the incident that led to it. But speaking to The Quint, Yadav confirmed that all these profiles are fake and she is not on Twitter.
There are multiple red flags that indicate that these profiles are fake. Let’s take a look at two of these profiles.
1. Sunita Yadav’s ‘Official’ Handle?
Take this profile for instance, which claims to be the official Twitter handle of Sunita Yadav is based out of Jaipur. (An archived version of the profile can be seen here.)
A glance at some of the earlier tweets by this account showed that they were about the Meena or the Mina community in Rajasthan and there was not a single tweet before this incident which suggested that the account belonged to her.
We couldn't conclusively prove this, but in all probability, the previous handle of the account was ‘@RealKomalMeena’. When we went though the earlier tweets of the account, the comments mentioned this profile which is now unavailable.
We further searched on Twitter for ‘@RealKomalMeena’ and the only profile that popped up was the current profile which is now in the name of Sunita Yadav.
But after multiple people called out the fake profile on Twitter, the user purged its timeline to remove all the earlier tweets. The bio now reads, “This is my only account”.
While this account tweeted about Yadav’s resignation, the other account, which has now mentioned that it’s a parody account, urged people to follow it.
Fake Account to Gain Followers?
This Twitter account amassed a following of over 12k followers.
Though the profile doesn’t claim to be the “official profile”, it has been engaging with people masquerading as Yadav asking them to follow her.
While going through the profile, we found that earlier interactions with the profile were under the handle ‘@Yadavteju111’. Though we can’t conclusively prove that was the earlier handle, it is evident that it is not Yadav’s account.
(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9643651818, or e-mail it to us at webqoof@thequint.com and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)