As Indian pacer Arshdeep Singh became a victim of heavy trolling on social media for dropping a crucial catch in India vs Pakistan match, a narrative was created by netizens of Singh being connected with Khalistan. But how did this start? It seems like where there is controversy, there is always Mohammad Zubair. This comes as BJP leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa filed a police complaint against fact-checker and co-founder of Alt News website Mohammed Zubair, accusing him of "spreading hate" against the cricketer and the Sikh community with his tweet.

 

 

The BJP leader cited a tweet by Mohammad Zubair where he had shared screenshots of tweets against Arshdeep posted on various handles. "Police complaint against @zoo_bear who worked with Pak agencies to set “Khalistani” narrative against #ArshdeepSingh in India. Zubair’s screenshots were used by Pak handles to defame India and fuel hate campaign against Sikhs in India. He was a part of planned conspiracy agnst Sikhs," he tweeted.

 

 

Sirsa stated that Zubair was "trying to portray that such abusive and malicious tweets were posted by Indian Twitter handles, whereas the reality is that most of these Twitter accounts are Pakistani accounts". He also claimed some were created just for the purpose of this tweet, “'the sole intention behind which was to spread hate against a nationalist and national level player who has given his heart and soul playing for the country and also against the entire Sikh community”.

 

 

Things became suspicious by the time the last runs were scored by Pakistan, Zubair had already a series of screenshots of Twitter users who used the term “Khalistani” for Arshdeep Singh. Fans have been disappointed when a player does not perform well but the word "Khalistani" was never used for a player. And Zubair searching such word, it is amusing, isn't it? According to Investigative reporter Vijay Patel, the tweet was particularly Retweeted and Liked by many Pakistani handles.

 

 

 

The so-called liberals like Zafar Saifii, Rana Ayyub, and several others wanted the ball in their court. They started pretending to support Arshdeep Singh as, according to them, Indians were targeting him for losing the match and calling him a Khalistani. Things even got more suspicious when former Indian cricketer and AAP leader Harbhajan Singh was also involved in this controversy saying that Arshdeep was being targeted. His tweet came only a few minutes after the match was over at 23.47 PM.

 

 

 

As reported earlier, there were Pakistani handles who spread the propaganda to suggest that Indian News channels called Arshdeep a Khalistani. For e.g. ABP News Channel. They were making a narrative that the people of India hate Sikhs.

 

 

Zaid Hamid, whose account was withheld in India by orders of the Indian government, also added fuel to the fire and said “a Sikh played a role” in Pakistan’s victory. As reported earlier, a Pakistani-born journalist WS Khan, tweeted, “Arshdeep is clearly part of the Pakistani-backed Khalistan movement.”

 

 

All this indicates that Mohammad Zubair and Pakistan have teamed up to create this conspiracy! Remember the Nupur Sharma episode! The same pattern is being repeated.

 

His page entry in Wikipedia was changed to reflect the Khalistan association. It has been learned that the word ‘India’ was replaced with ‘Khalistan’ at several locations on the page. Also, the name of the cricketer was changed twice while several changes were made to his cricket stats. The entries read that Arshdeep was selected to play for the ‘Khalistani national cricket team’. It has been restored now.

 

 

According to the user’s IP address, citing the version history for Singh’s page, was allocated to the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), Pakistan’s national telecoms provider (the equivalent of India’s BSNL). The address mentioned is – ‘39.41.171.125’.

 

Accordingly, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Monday summoned Wikipedia executives in India to seek an explanation over the matter. The central government is of the opinion that the changes made to Arshdeep’s Wikipedia bio could cause disharmony in India.