On 2 February, incarcerated journalist Siddique Kappan walked out of jail after a Lucknow court signed the order of his release.
The 43-year-old journalist from Kerala's Malappuram district, who was in jail for nearly 28 months, was arrested in 2020 by the Uttar Pradesh police while he was on his way to Hathras, where a 19-year-old Dalit girl had died after she was allegedly raped.
Now a Twitter account, which had over 5,500 followers at the time of writing this story, posing to be Kappan is active on the microblogging platform.
WHAT HAS THE ACCOUNT TWEETED ABOUT?
Recently, the account has retweeted tweets about Kappan's release and it has also interacted with several tweets from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders – including the prime minister.
The account had interacted with PM Modi's tweet.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
Some of the earlier tweets from the account are in support of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
An archive version of the tweet can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
IF NOT KAPPAN THEN WHO?
Since the account was still active at the time of writing this story, we checked itsTwitter ID – a unique number given to each Twitter account. The Twitter ID of the account was 1424004828603195395.
Every Twitter account has a unique ID.
(Source: TwitterID/Screenshot)
We ran a Google search using the ID and came across an article published by a website Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Center (DFRAC) on 27 May 2022. The article had investigated an account and had mentioned that the same ID was associated with '@AmarPas28124530'.
On searching for '@AmarPas28124530,' we came across several replies in which '@SiddiqueKappan' was tagged, indicating that this account could have changed its name from RJD's Amar Paswan to Kappan.
On looking for @AmarPas28124530, we came across tweets where @SiddiqueKappan was tagged.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
We then looked at older tweets and found one in which the user had wished RJD leader Bhai Virendra on his birthday. A look at the archive of this tweet on Wayback Machine – an archiving tool – showed the same tweet but with @AmarPas28124530 as the user name. [Archive here]
We found an older version of the tweet that now exists in the name of Siddique Kappan.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
On inspecting the Twitter ID, we found it to be the same as @SiddiqueKappan's account.
The screenshot shows the Twitter ID of @AmarPas28124530's account.
(Source: Wayback Machine/Screenshot)
We also found other older tweets, [archive here] which were tweeted when the account was in the name of the RJD leader. In addition, both the accounts displayed 'August 2021' as the month of joining the platform.
Both the account's joined showed the same joining month and year.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
Further, Siddique Kappan's wife Raihanath Kappan also confirmed to The Quint that the account is fake.
Clearly, all the available evidence confirms that the earlier user name of this account was '@AmarPas28124530,' which has been changed to @SiddiqueKappan.
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