Fact-check | Hijab row: Fake accounts pose as Mandya student Muskan Khan

Muskan Khan, a student of PES college in Mandya, made headlines after a video of her standing up against a saffron-clad mob heckling her for wearing a burqa surfaced on social media amid colleges in Karnataka barring students from wearing hijabs on the premises.

Several fake accounts have now cropped up on Twitter in Muskan’s name. Alt News is listing some of these imposter accounts in this report.

1- @musk_a_n

After journalist Mahmodul Hassan tweeted that the handle @musk_a_n is a fake account, the handle claimed that Hassan is “misleading” people and this is the official account of Muskan.

However, this handle’s earlier name and username were Aqsa Gul and @aqsa_gull2 respectively. A Twitter search of @aqsa_gull2 throws up tweets by @musk_a_n.

2- @muskan_Khan_1

This account, in its pinned tweet, has made a post in Hindi that says, “I am rarely active on social media. But Insha’Allah I will be active in a few days and I will follow back everyone who follows me. Write #AllahuAkbar. Follow @muskan_Khan_1.”

However, in response to a user saying that the handle is fake, @muskan_Khan_1 replied, “A person’s name and profile are insignificant, it is their thought that matters.”

3- @muskankhan_0786

This imposter account had made a tweet that said, “Wearing #hijab is beauty of my personality. [sic]” It has also been thanking people for praising the real Muskan Khan.

The earlier username of this handle was @fatima_khan_72.

4- @FearlessTaru

While this account’s username does not carry Muskan’s name, it does say ‘Muskan Khan’ in the name and has also used her photo as the display picture.

We found a tweet where a person has asked one @Taru307Khan to follow him back and @tarufearless has replied to the user.

@Taru307Khan was the account’s earlier username. Searching for the username on Twitter throws up tweets by @FearlessTaru.

This is further confirmed by a tweet where a user is replying ‘Gn’ to @FearlessTaru. The original tweet was deleted by the user but we found an archived version where the response is actually to @Taru307Khan.

5- @RealMuskanKhan_, @mistertanvir and @MuskanKhanbibi

Journalist Mahmodul Hassan tweeted that Muskan Khan’s father Hussain Khan told him that his daughter does not have an account on Twitter. Hassan also jotted down names of some imposter accounts. Some of these no longer exist on Twitter but @MuskanKhanbibi does. We also found two other handles – @RealMuskanKhan_ and @mistertanvir – which are also imposter accounts.

Below are screenshots of the accounts.

This trend of creating imposter accounts in the name of individuals who gain sudden prominence is not new, yet there doesn’t seem to be any scrutiny by Twitter to stop such kind of disinformation.

Since Muskan Khan yelled back ‘Allah-hu-Akbar’ at a saffron-clad mob harassing her with chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’, several instances of disinformation are widespread in her name, including pictures of JDS member Njama Nazeer that were used to target Khan, a Congress MLA misidentified as Khan to show the hijab row is a ‘Congress conspiracy’ and the false claim that Dubai’s Burj Khalifa honoured her.