Rumors about the death of an Indian actor: thousands of fake Twitter accounts deleted

Billboard for the campaign for justice after the suicide of Indian actor Sushant Singh Rajput, in Bombay on September 28, 2020. Indranil MUKHERJEE / AFP

Text by: Sébastien Farcis Follow

3 min

The investigation into the suicide of a famous Bollywood actor has not only ignited passions for the past four months in India, but it even obscures the issues related to Covid-19 in the media, as many claim the actor was murdered.

However, this media soap opera seems to have been inflated thanks to an online campaign orchestrated by the party in power.

To do this, tens of thousands of fake accounts were created on Twitter, which the police have just revealed to have found.

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From our correspondent in New Delhi,

Nearly 80,000 accounts are suspected of having been created to carry out this campaign.

These are “ 

 ”, according to the Bombay police, opened from abroad just after

.

These accounts sometimes publish messages in foreign languages, but always using the keywords supporting the murder thesis.

The police suspect some of them to be simple robots used to multiply the effect of this campaign on Twitter and thus inflate the popularity of this conspiracy theory.

The suspected BJP

Researchers from the University of Michigan have indeed studied how this campaign was born.

They showed, from the analysis of more than 100,000 tweets, that it was the members of the Hindu nationalist party BJP, in power in New Delhi, who orchestrated it from mid-June.

The objective was to discredit the Bombay regional government, held by the opposition.

Police are now investigating whether the BJP was behind the creation of these fake Twitter accounts and bots to escalate the pressure.

A link that has not yet been proven.

Ideal script for media

Televisions, mainly those close to power, quickly seized, and with both hands, this story.

That of a handsome and young Bollywood actor who mysteriously dies - a murder supposedly disguised as suicide - to which were added leaks from the authorities on an alleged drug ring in the midst of these stars.

The ideal script was picked up by these 24-hour news channels which made it a spicy soap opera for four months.

This could be laughable if it had not resulted in the media harassment and then the incarceration of the actor's ex-girlfriend, accused, for the moment without any proof, of organizing this alleged drug trafficking;

if social networks had not created a climate of generalized suspicion and toxic polarization;

and if, finally, this subject had not thus obscured the enormous social problems arisen because of the

.

But this media drama may have precisely this objective: to serve as a diversion.

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