A screenshot of a tweet purportedly made by Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan is going viral on social media.
The tweet claims that Khan will buy all the theaters in the country and make his upcoming film, Pathaan, a superhit, if people boycott it in India.
However, this tweet was not made by the official account of the actor - @iamsrk. The viral post showed a fabricated tweet and had the username '@fakesrk'.
Recently, the cast of the movie, Khan and Deepika Padukone shared the first look of their characters in the movie which is set to be released on 25 January 2023.
CLAIM
Several users on social media have shared this screenshot which says in Hindi, "If my film "Pathan Se Panga" is banned, then I will make the film a superhit by buying all the theaters and buying all its seats, which is uprooted. I am the king of Bollywood. Blown Bhau's account, now what do you want me to blow up yours too! (sic)"
An archive version of the post can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We searched the handle seen in the viral screenshot '@fakesrk' on Twitter and found an account with two followers and the username said, "Fake Saharukh".
The username from the screenshot led to this account.
(Source: Twitter/screenshot)
We looked up Shah Rukh Khan's official account on Twitter and noticed that his account handle goes by the name '@iasmsrk' and not the one seen in the screenshot - '@fakesrk'.
The fake and the real username.
(Source: The Quint)
We also noticed inconsistencies in the format of the tweet in the viral image. The screenshot said '9.3K Retweets and comments' but Twitter does not follow this format, instead, it says 'Retweets, Quote Tweets and Likes'.
Theformat of the screenshot does not match the real Twitter format.
(Source: The Quint)
Next, we checked tweets from 2020 made by Khan but no such tweet about his upcoming film Pathaan was found.
We also looked for news reports about the actor making a remark about buying the whole theatre for this new movie but no such news was reported.
Clearly, an edited screenshot of a tweet from a fake Twitter handle under Shah Rukh Khan's name was shared as real.
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