What is the claim?
An X (formerly Twitter) account, claiming to be of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) constable Kulwinder Kaur who allegedly slapped actor-politician Kangana Ranaut, has surfaced on social media. Kangana Ranaut was recently elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) from the Mandi constituency in the North Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.
On June 6, she was reportedly attacked by Kaur at Chandigarh airport for her disparaging remarks against the farmers during the protests in 2020. The newly-elected Mandi MP had termed the protesting farmers as "Khalistani" supporters. The word Khalistani here refers to hardliners who have been demanding a separate nation for Sikhs.
Shortly after the incident, an account with the username '@Kul_winderKaur' and display name 'Kulvinder Kaur CISF' with an image of the CISF official gained traction on X. The account shared several posts related to the alleged incident, and users started retweeting and commenting on the post in the official's support. While writing this story, the account had over 23,900 followers. An archive of the account can be found here.
However, the account is fake and we found that its earlier handle was '@SatypalMalikG'.
What are the facts?
On checking the older posts on the account from May and June 2024, we found that the earlier handle of the account was '@SatypalMalikG'.
On June 1, 2024, the account reposted an exit poll published by news channel News 24, where we could notice this handle. Many other posts from May 2024 also showed the same username. This indicated that the account earlier was '@SatypalMalikG' and recently changed its username to '@Kul_winderKaur'.
We then used the handle '@SatypalMalikG' and looked for interactions on X's search page. We noticed that the profile which popped up was the one that is now impersonating Kulwinder Kaur.
On hovering over the tagged account on one of the responses, the same profile shows up.
User ID - It's a match!
We also checked the user ID, a unique numeric code assigned to each account, of both and found that it, too, matched - 1506590836267827200.
The verdict
Clearly, an impostor account of CISF constable Kulwinder Kaur has gained traction and followers on X. Our research has showed that this account's previous handle was '@SatypalmalikG'.
(This story was originally published by Logically Facts and republished by NDTV as part of the Shakti Collective)
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