Twitter blocks fake accounts named after IAF pilot Abhinandan Varthaman

New Delhi, Mar 03: While India continues to battle Pakistan-perpetrated terrorism and cross-border infiltration along the international border, social media cashed in the opportunity, with some users creating fake accounts named after Indian Air Force (IAF) pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman.

Ever since Varthaman was captured and his subsequent release on March 1, Twitter has run amok, with several fake profiles of the IAF pilot surfacing on the social media micro-blogging platform.

Indian government sources issued a clarification on Sunday, stating that the accounts posting tweets in the name of Abhinandan Varthaman are fake, false and impersonated.

Twitter handles '@Abhinandan_wc', '@_pilotiaf', '@WC_Abhinandan', '@AbhiNandan_WCdr' are some of the fake profiles created in the name of the IAF pilot. Some of them even have over 3000 followers, with several posts in English, Hindi and other vernacular languages.

The first activity of the account was made on March 1 with a retweet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's welcome to the Indian Air Force pilot.

Wearing blue blazer and grey trousers, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman crossed over into India from the Attari-Wagha border at 9:20 pm on Friday, March 1. He was handed over by the Pakistan Rangers to the BSF personnel following paperwork.

Indian Air Force fighter jets on February 26 launched a major offensive against terrorist organisations using Pakistani soil to carry out terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and annihilated training camps of the Jaish-e-Mohammed in Balakot that falls in the Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa region, along with Muzaffarabad and Chakothi in PoK. The terror group is responsible for the dastardly terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama on February 14 where 40 CRPF personnel were killed.