New Delhi

After Indian cricketer, Arshdeep Singh dropped a catch in a crunch India-Pakistan Super-4 stage match of Asia Cup in Dubai, Pakistani Twitterati are fuelling wrath against Indian cricketers.

An exclusive report by Digital Forensics, Research and Analytical Centre (DFRAC) unveiled a false narrative against India and its cricketers.

Analyzing more than 20,000 accounts that interacted with the hashtags (#ArshdeepSingh and #Khalistani), it was found that more than 100 of these accounts were created on September 5^th alone, and later tweeted on the hashtags.

This is not the first time any cricketer is facing such a backlash, after India's defeat by Pakistan. Last year in the T20 World Cup 2021, India was defeated by Pakistan. Even at that time, similar hate was seen against the Indian batsman Virat Kohli, the Indian bowler Mohammed Shami, and Rohit Sharma.

At that time Shami too was called an ISI agent.

As soon as India lost the match against Pakistan, #ArshdeepSingh began trending with more than 27,000 tweets. Around 4,500 tweets were trending with #Khalistani.

On September 3rd, #ArshdeepSingh was in trend on Twitter.

A sudden increase was observed on September 4th after 11:05 pm and the hashtag reached its peak on September 5th with more than 12K tweets. #Khalistani was started on the night of 4th September after 11: 05 pm and was at its peak on September 5th with more than 4K tweets.

The first tweet on #Arshdeepsingh with the word Khalistan was done by a Pakistani account with the name Usman (@hmudg1997), reported DFRAC.

Google Search timeline suggests that the keyword "Arshdeep Singh" started on Sept 4th 2022, late-night, thereafter gradually decreasing.

Similar activities were conducted in Pakistan and UAE, intending to amplify misinformation. When the DFRAC team searched for "Khalistani" on Google trends, it showed that the keyword's timeline had started on September 4th and then gradually gained pace on September 5th.

The users interested in the keyword were majorly from Pakistan. Moreover, Wikipedia page of Arshdeep Singh was edited on September 4th. The word "India" was replaced with "Khalistan" on Singh's Wikipedia page by an anonymous user even as another editor shortly undid these changes.

The IP address 39.41.171.125 from where the Wikipedia page was edited was from Punjab, Pakistan. The Internet Service provider is Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited, reported DFRAC.

In response, the Indian government summoned Wikipedia executives with respect to the spread of misinformation.

Superficially, it seems that the disappointed Indian fans made the posts against Arshdeep, but the real story is way different. In the past, too Pakistani Twitterati propagated a similar narrative against the Indian Cricketer Mohammad Shami.

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The DFRAC provided evidence that it was in fact the Pakistani Twitterati that created a false narrative about the Indians targeting Arshdeep Singh. The majority of tweets against Arshdeep Singh were done by Pakistani social media users.