Is Khalistani propaganda on Social Media part of an Info-War?

There has been a periodic surge in Khalistan related posts on social media. I decided to investigate, whether this sudden upsurge is by genuine Sikhs, or part of sponsored info-war. As noted, these activities are periodic in nature, coinciding with major Sikh events, which raised the suspicion.

For starting point, I picked up the trending hashtag which were hyped during the Baisakhi festival, a major Sikh festival. The major activities upon Twitter were observed during April 10–14, 2020. The exact time when major political unrest was occurring in India due to anti-CAA protests and thereafter continued by the terrible Delhi riots. Thus, Khalistanis found it an apt situation to fuel their agenda amidst such socio-political upheaval. The world and specifically India was becoming hostile space towards the Sikhs. Look for yourself:

Amidst such upheaval, I looked into the trending hashtag #Khalsa4Khalistan which was taking a toll upon Twitter.

Basic Observations:

1. The hashtags were mainly trended in Canada and Pakistan, with some echo in the US and India (via Social Bearing)

2. Major handles which contributed to the trend were:

Forensic Report:

I picked up certain random accounts from the list to analyze in detail, and following are our observations:

1. Several accounts that were used in running the campaign were Fake accounts: How?

Twitter has a standard naming policy for accounts, giving either first or second name with numeric (unless specified otherwise). For example the handle below:

However, many of the handles used for running this campaign were found to have changed their names AFTER creating their handles, and likely for this campaign:

(The names were deliberately chosen to be a Hindu/ Punjabi names, which was knowingly a part of SFJ’s Pannun’s plan (the secessionist group behind Khalistani propaganda) as he had planned to reach out to Hindu Community also, and in case there is not much traction, these handles could show support.)

2. On related theme, these accounts not only appear to be fake, but are likely to be a part of a digital marketing team/ campaign. An interesting handle that came across was @KapoorPunam.

The account has now been renamed as Komal Kapoor.

• She claims to be a journalist, interested in Indian politics: But It is interesting to see a “journalist” with a logo of a secessionist organization — SFJ — that is declared illegal in India.
• The self- proclaimed Journalist do not mention anything about the media house she is working with, nor her past work.
• She also seems to be impressed with Pakistan PM Imran Khan and lauds.
• She is also in the business of promoting commercial ventures, and in this particular case — a Pakistani singer Sophia Jamil, interestingly she happens to be the poster girl of SFJ.

3. Thanks to “Indian Journalist” Punam Kapoor’s promotion of overseas based Pakistani singer Sophia Jamal, we stumbled upon several other promotions of the same music album — from the handles that were also part of the Trending Hashtag campaign: These include:

There appears to be a possibility that these handles are also used as a part of social media/digital media promotion Company — connected with Karachi, Pakistan.

I found some accounts in the group promoting Khalistan related hashtags, which belong to Pakistani nationals working for social media/ digital marketing company.

4. To dig deeper and to find out whether there was a wider network, I used certain tools to analyze their follower/ following network. For this reason, I picked up three random handles from amongst the handles promoting the hashtags: @Ravinda50447617, @NehaSin86607410, @rashmis58659047. These accounts were created in March 2020:

I found 61 accounts that were followed by all three of them.

Interestingly, 3 of these 61 accounts were created just 57 days ago, 2 of them were created 56 days ago. I further analyzed the accounts created in February 2020.

This again threw 51 accounts who were followed by all 3 of them.

Interestingly, several of these accounts were put into action on the same dates, which is a characteristic feature of digital marketing/ social media campaign companies. A strategy which they stick to propagate their nefarious agenda.

Conclusion: Based on the findings, we could safely conclude that the above mentioned hashtag #KhalsaForKhalistan was orchestrated by fake accounts, likely run through social media/ digital marketing company from Pakistan with mostly Pakistani handles which were recently changed into Sikh names to flourish their vested interests.