Network of fake Twitter accounts behind arrest of Indian journalist Mohammed Zubair

At least 757 anonymous Twitter accounts, linked to the state president of the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV) and co-convenor of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in Gujarat Vikash Ahir, were the driving force behind the arrest of Indian journalist Mohammed Zubair.

Zubair had played a role in drawing attention to incendiary remarks about Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) recently made by a spokesperson for Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that sparked widespread protests across the Islamic world.

Indian publication The Wire, in an exclusive report released on Saturday, said an investigation uncovered a network of hundreds of accounts linked to Vikash, all of which attempted to implicate Zubair and Partik Sinha – co-founder of AltNews – by misconstruing the journalists’ old tweets as “Hinduphobic” and tagging local authorities in order to have the duo incarcerated for offending religious sentiment.

"The arrest of Mohammed Zubair, journalist and co-founder of AltNews, is the culmination of a years-long campaign by a network of anonymous and inauthentic accounts linked to Vikash Ahir, state president of the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV) and co-convenor of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in Gujarat, an investigation by The Wire has established."

This network also consisted of eight replica accounts of “balajikijaiin”, the anonymous account whose complaint formed the basis of Zubair’s arrest by Delhi police.

The eight accounts had similar features: the same username, profile picture and identical tweets and employed the same modus operandi to target the AltNews co-founders on Twitter.

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Currently, five of these eight replica accounts have been deleted, however, two other accounts – balajikijain and HanumanBhakt101 – remained active.

A closer inspection of the network showed that 283 accounts demonstrated multiple characteristics associated with bot-like behaviour.

In addition to sustaining anonymity, the accounts tweeted more than 500 times a day over the last month at all hours of the day with little time for human activities. They used third-party tools to automate and spam targeted hashtags related to Zubair’s arrest.

"Complementing this activity was a larger network of 18,364 accounts which were also used to trend other hashtags – #ArrestZubair, #ArrestMohamedZubair and #ArrestBlasphemerMdZubair – that targeted the journalist," added the Indian publication.

"The original @balajikijaiin was the complainant cited in the Delhi Police’s case against Mohammed Zubair. The account was temporarily disabled after the public outcry generated by the case; when it returned, it proceeded to make a similar tweet against the co-founder of AltNews, Pratik Sinha, targeting out a tweet of his from seven years ago and asking for police action to be taken against him."

Earlier this month Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of ALT News, an independent fact-checking website was arrested by the Delhi Police for allegedly ‘hurting religious sentiments and ‘promoting enmity with his satirical tweets criticising the rising censorship and calling out discrimination against minorities during the tenure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.