Pakistan defeated India by five wickets on September 4, 2022, in a T20 Asia Cup match played in Dubai. The defeat of the Indian Team infuriated and disappointed many Indian fans. Following Pakistan’s victory, many leftist accounts including ALT News founder Mohammed Zubair, author Mohamed Zeeshan, and ALT News journalist Abhishek mocked people belonging to Hindu ideology by selectively sharing screenshots of some Twitter users calling Arshdeep a Khalistani. These leftist accounts attempted to damage the reputation of India and claimed that the trend to call Indian cricket player Arshdeep Singh a khalistani was started by Indian right wing.
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Even left-leaning columnist and journalist Rana Ayyub and UNESCO chairperson Ashok Swain shared a tweet in support of Arshdeep Singh and mocked Hindus.
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Fact Check
Contrary to what the leftist claim, we found in our research that the trend to use term Khalistani for Arshdeep was first started by a Pakistani conspiracy theorist Zaid Hamid and WS Khan. Arshdeep was criticized by WS Khan, who wrote that Arshdeep is undoubtedly associated with the Khalistan movement, which is backed by Pakistan.
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Anshul Saxena, a Twitter activist, shared a snapshot of a few Pakistani Twitter accounts, revealing that they were the ones who began the trend on Twitter calling Arshdeep “Khalistani.”
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The majority of these accounts that are attacking Arshdeep are from Pakistan and are spreading anti-India propaganda from Pakistan. Additionally, a number of fake accounts were made to indicate that when Arshdeep missed the catch, Indians ridiculed him for being a Sikh. At the same time, Arshdeep had become Pakistan’s most popular Twitter trend after the game, which was covered by numerous journalists and social media influencers in Pakistan.
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Further, we discovered that the Wikipedia page of Indian cricket player Arshdeep Singh was edited and khalistani was added. The Wikipedia page was altered by someone from Pakistan, based on the IP information given by Twitter user Anshul Saxena. It is very obvious they purposefully modified the page to target sikh and damage the reputation of Indian Hindus.
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According to statistics shared by Twitter user Anshul Saxena in another tweet, the search interest for the term “khalistani” peaked in Pakistan on September 4, 2022.
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More over half of the searches for term “Khalistani” were made from Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, according to the Google Trends Map shared by Twitter user The Hawk Eye. The public condemnation of the plot is also the cause of the trend in India at the moment.
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Through linguistic analysis of Twitter Advance Search, it was discovered that people connected to Imran Khan’s party PTI and the extremist group TLP, both located in Pakistan, also used the term “Khalistani.” Many bot accounts have also been used in this trend.
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It is evident from our report that the trend of using the term “Khalistani” for Indian cricketer Arshdeep Singh was first started by Pakistan. Sadly, a few Indians fell for the bait.
Mohammed Zubair successfully advanced Pakistan’s propaganda to malign India’s reputation. His tweet, which unfairly disparaged Indians by selectively presenting screenshots from only a few Indian Twitter users, was amplified and endorsed by many Pakistani Twitter accounts.
| Claim | Indian Twitter account started the trend to call Arshdeep Singh a Khalistani |
| Claimed by | Left Media |
| Fact Check | False |
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