Fake Twitter account posing as ‘Har Har Shambu’ song fame Farmani Naaz viral

Recently, singer Farmani Naaz’s cover of the song ‘Har Har Shambhu’ has become quite popular. Abhilipsa Panda sang the original version of the song and both versions of the song are highly praised.

Against this backdrop, a Twitter user with the handle ‘@FarmaniNazz786‘ posted a tweet on August 2, 2022, posing as the real Farmani Naaz. The post reads, “My ancestors were Hindu and that’s why I sang the bhajan ‘Har Har Shambhu’.” It also states that she will soon convert to Hinduism. The tweet racked up 48,000 likes and was retweeted by close to 8,000 people. (Archived link)

On August 5, this handle tweeted that women were treated with the same level of respect as men only under Hinduism. This was the reason why she chose to sing ‘Har Har Shambhu’. In another tweet, the user wrote that she sang it as a way to ‘purify’ her family. (Archived link)

Another tweet posted by the handle alleged that she has received beheading threats from ‘jihadis’. (Archived link)

In addition, the handle has repeatedly requested social media users to follow them. The account has been deleted as of this writing.

Fact-check

Alt News found a plethora of handles claiming to be Farmani Naaz on Twitter. However, upon closely examining the timeline of these handles, we learned that only one handle i.e., ‘@farmaninaaz786’, is genuine.

It is worth noting that both the handles are spelt differently. Naaz is spelt as ‘naaz’ in the original account, whereas the user posing as Farmani has spelt the surname as ‘nazz’ and they have also spelt Farmani with the capital letter ‘F’.

The original handle posted a video statement on August 3, informing her followers that ‘@farmaninaaz786′ was the authentic account and all other Twitter accounts were fake. She also clarified that fake accounts posing as her talked of religious conversion, but there was no truth to these claims.

My original account Twitter @farmaninaaz786 pic.twitter.com/PecGeoX1nH

— farmani Naaz 786 (@farmaninaaz786) August 3, 2022

However, this video was also downloaded and tweeted by the fake Twitter handle ‘@FarmaniNazz786’. This makes it seem that this is the real Twitter account of Farmani Naaz.

After going through old tweets posted by ‘@FarmaniNazz786’, we learned that the handle’s name used to be ‘@Nitin_shuklaa’ and was changed to ‘@FarmaniNaazz’. The user eventually settled for the username ‘@FarmaniNazz786’ in an attempt to mirror the real account. The previous name of the handle appears in replies to old tweets. (Link 1, Link 2)

The real Twitter handle ‘@farmaninaaz786’ was created in August 2020. Taking a closer look at its timeline, we could not find any suspicious tweets that mentioned conversion or death threats by ‘jihadis’.

To sum it up, ‘@farmaninaaz786’ is the real Twitter handle of Farmani Naaz, and all the others are fake. This is not the first time that fake Twitter accounts of influential personalities have gone viral. Earlier too, fake accounts were created in which users were posing as President Droupadi Murmu and farmer leader Rakesh Tikait.