The former governor of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir Satyapal Malik said that he "told to keep quiet" about security lapses surrounding the attack on the convoy carrying Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in the state's Pulwama district on 14 September 2019, in an interview with The Wire.
Now, a Twitter account impersonating Malik with around 28,000 followers at the time of writing this article is active on the platform.
It goes by the username '@Satyapalmalik_' and was created in December 2021.
An archive of this Twitter account can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
What has the account been tweeting about?: We went through this account's timeline and saw that it had been sharing tweets related to Satyapal Malik since October 2022.
In the first available tweet, it expresses support for the Rashtriya Lok Dal and its leader Jayant Chaudhary.
In another tweet shared on 16 February, the account shared a video of Satyapal Malik discussing how he would only join a political party that worked for farmers' welfare.
The account has been tweeting as Satyapal Malik.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
One of its more recent tweets which was shared on 14 April shared a clip from Malik's interview with The Wire, stating that when he had informed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval about the security lapses during the Pulwama attack, he was "asked to keep quiet."
So, how do we know that this is a fake account?: While going through this account's interactions, we saw that it had replied to tweets congratulating wrestler Deepak Punia on securing a gold medal in the 2022 Commonwealth Games in August that year.
Some of these tweets include ones by industrialist Anand Mahindra, weightlifter Mirabai Chanu and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
(Note: Swipe to view all tweets.)
The Twitter account responded to a tweet by Anand Mahindra.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
We also came across a tweet sent to this account, which mentioned its username as '@DeepakPunia_'.
A tweet sent to the account mentioned the username '@Deepakpunia_'
(Source: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)
While looking for tweets sent to '@Deepakpunia_', we saw that the tweets reflected '@Satyapalmalik_' as the username.
Tweets sent to '@Deepakpunia_' showed tweets for '@Satyapalmalik_'
(Source: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)
Older tweets by '@Deepakpunia_': We checked Wayback Machine for any old tweets shared by '@Deepakpunia_'.
The webpage archiving service showed us several archived tweets shared by this account, one of which included a reply to the tweet by Fadnavis.
This archive reflected the account's username as '@Deepakpunia_'.
The archive shows the account's screen name as Deepak Punia.
(Source: Wayback Machine/Screenshot)
Account identifier: Twitter assigns a unique 16 digit string of numbers as an identifier for each account, which remains consistent regardless of changes to the username.
We ran the username '@Satyapalmalik_' through TweeterID, a service which identifies this code. It showed that the user ID assigned to this account was 1472536399127597057.
We found the unique Twitter ID associated with this account.
(Source: TweeterID/Screenshot)
On comparing this unique ID to that of @Deepakpunia's, we saw that both ID's were the same.
Both accounts share the same unique ID.
(Source: Wayback Machine/Altered by The Quint)
Satyapal Malik's real Twitter ID: In a 2021 report by NDTV, Malik's Raj Bhavan secretary Pravin Bakshi mentioned that Malik's real Twitter account operated with the username '@SatyapalMalik6'.
Malik's real Twitter ID has the handle '@SatyapalMalik6'.
(Source: NDTV/Altered by The Quint)
Satyapal Malik recently shared a video on his Twitter account on 25 March, mentioning that there were several other accounts on the platform that were impersonating him.
Conclusion: A Twitter account with the handle '@Satyapalmalik_' is impersonating former Jammu and Kashmir governor Satyapal Malik, whose actual Twitter account is '@SatyapalMalik6'.
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