Sometime in 2018, an obscure ‘advocate’ emerged into political discourse on social media. Hardly anyone knew anything about him then but people assumed, with no apparent reason to doubt his motivations, that he had gotten himself into the fight out of the goodness of his heart. That was almost three years ago. Now, he is universally reviled and one of the few things that the left and the right agrees on is that the ‘advocate’ here is the human equivalent of animal faeces. We are, of course, referring to Advocate Vibhor Anand.
Vibhor Anand in January 2021 is pretty well known as a lunatic who would practically say anything to build building his follower base. But it wasn’t known when he first surfaced, which was sometime around 2018. Due to the spontaneous nature of the growth of the ‘right-wing’ in India, individuals on social media had the natural inclination to trust people on the same side of the political spectrum unless they specifically gave reason not to.
Thus it came to pass that he quickly became popular for a time with people on social media. His initial tactic for gaining fame was maintaining a pretense that he was fighting the Big Bad Baddies of the mainstream media. He established the ‘India Against Biased Media’ (IABM), an initiative to combat propagandists in the media legally. Consequently, many popular figures on social media are claimed to have been invited as speakers at the IABM Conclave 2018.
According to a crowdfunding campaign that was launched, “Advocate Vibhor Anand Founded India Against Biased Media (IABM) this year to counter the rampant menace of Fake and Biased Media reporting in India.” “IABM has been very successful to channelize the anger of the Public at large in a positive direction through legal mean in a short span of time,” it said.
The campaign added, “IABM within one month of its launch has a strong volunteer force of over 3000 individuals across the country and further has a very strong presence in Social Media, with almost 10000 followers collectively in all SM platforms. IABM further has strong team of over 50 Legal Professional headed by Adv. Vibhor Anand himself across India. IABM plans to expand its legal team to over 300 Lawyers in next three months.”
Since IAM was founded, the campaign claims to have “filed over 100 criminal cases across India against actress Swara Bhaskar, Dhruv Rathee, Sagarika Ghose, Shekhar Gupta, Aroon Purie, Barkha Dutt, Shehla Rashid, Rana Ayub etc. collectively for spreading Fake and Biased News. And all these cases would soon reach courts for logical conclusion.” But the cases never really reached their logical conclusion and it managed to raise only Rs 10 as per the Crowdkash website.
By October 2018, nevertheless, there were murmurs about the possible fraud he was running.
Vibhor Anand and the Nirbhaya Case
Before proceeding any further, it needs to be stated that earlier Vibhor Anand used to tweet under the username @Vibhor_anand. However, that account has been suspended on Twitter. Since then, he tweets under @OfficeOfVA. Therefore, a lot of the screenshots used here are sourced from tweets where people shared screenshots of the tweets Anand had made.
Sometime in 2019, it became known that the Nirbhaya rapists were defended in Court by Anand’s father. Now, people can ignore a lot of things but this is something that cannot be ignored. Thus, it led to an immense loss of credibility and ultimately, people stopped taking him seriously and considered him a malicious entity.
In July, he addressed the controversy and admitted that two of the accused in the Nirbhaya case were defended by his father and also admitted that it was him who convinced his father to defend the rapists. But that was not all.
Vibhor Anand claimed that the main accused and the prime witness in the case, that would be Nirbhaya’s friend, knew each other beforehand. He claimed that the then Home Minister of India had requested him to not disclose the evidence and went on to assert that it was ‘Pandey’ who called the bus.
2019: Vibhor Anand vs Indian Tweeter
Soon, however, people became suspicious of Vibhor Anand and he started becoming less and less popular on social media. Faced with the prospect of losing credibility, he made bizarre allegations against a popular user on Twitter on the right of center of the political spectrum. That was the proverbial nail in the coffin for Vibhor Anand but by then, he had lost a lot of the credibility already.
On the 19th of August, 2019, Vibhor Anand claimed that people associated with @indiantweeter were trying to locate him and kill him in Delhi. He did not provide any evidence, of course, but as we shall see, slandering people and leveling baseless allegations is his forte.
A short while later on the same day, Anand claimed that 3 groups were attempting to kill him and he had been advised by intelligence agencies to stay away from Delhi. One of the groups, he claimed, was from Chandni Chowk and therefore, he sarcastically urged @indiantweeter to help locate them. Again, it was evident by this point that Anand loves to slander people.
Then on, his allegations and claims escaped the domain of sanity and transcended into the boundless infinity of the insane.
The bizarre claims continue
Eight days after his slanderous allegations against the Twitter user, Vibhor Anand resorted to spreading conspiracy theories about the death of the late Union Minister Arun Jaitley. On the 27th of August, he asked his followers, “Was Arun Jaitley’s death a murder? Why Rahul Gandhi is so afraid?” He promised a ‘big expose’ within the next 24 hours but that never came.
A day prior to that, on the 26th of August, he had claimed that he was told by a “senior intelligence official posted in Dubai” about an ISI plan to assassinate Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. A tweet had apparently posted earlier was necessary, he claims, to save Imran Khan. He does not take the Pakistani PM’s name but it appears unlikely that the ‘IK’ could refer to anyone else.
On the 2nd of September, he claimed that he was looking for ‘hackers’ and offered to pay Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 5 lakh per month to “hack pakistani government sites”. What became of it is not clear and it is not clear how he would have paid them.
On the 12th of September, Anand claimed that he had names of 16 Indians working for ISI as Pakistan agents. He did provides a few names later on but those names could have belonged to a hundred thousand people in a country of 1.3 billion.
On the 27th of September, he levelled grave allegations against BJP leader Kapil Mishra, 25 days after he had claimed that he was unfollowed by BJP leaders for making the suggestion that Kapil Mishra should become the Chief Minister of Delhi.
On the 2nd of October 2019, he claimed that he had attempted suicide three days previously. This was one of the first times when he had floated having suicidal tendencies on social media. As we shall see, it is also part of a pattern.
It is pertinent to note that sometime earlier, probably in June 2019, although we are not sure about the precise date, Vibhor Anand claimed that he would commit suicide in front of the Delhi Police headquarters for alleged ‘harassment’. And through it all, he maintained the charade of a persecuted ‘nationalist’.
Such bizarre claims continued and by the end of 2019, Vibhor Anand had absolutely zero credibility. Things remained much of the same in 2020 but his fortunes were about to turn around. But before that, a quick detour.
Vibhor Anand and his past tirade against Narendra Modi
At some point, the opinions that the advocate reserved for Narendra Modi in 2012 went viral on social media. In November 2012, he had called the then Chief Minister of Gujarat a ‘mass murderer’ on Twitter.
Anand went on to compare Narendra Modi to the Mumbai attack terrorist Kasab and said that the latter ‘at least had the guts to accept his wrongdoings’.
By August 2018, however, his opinions had changed completely. Vibhor Anand then claimed that it would be his honour to be followed by the Prime Minister of India.
But as late as even 2016, the advocate was busy mouthing liberal talking points on social media.
Year 2020: The continued descent into madness
In April, Vibhor Anand claimed that he had initiated legal action against China for spreading Covid-19 and “waging a worldwide war”. ‘Details soon,’ he promised but we do not have any details regarding the matter as of now.
But it was in the death of Sushant Singh Rajput that Vibhor Anand found the ideal fertile ground for his new grift. He has made a series of bizarre allegations at different points and he conveniently jumped from one point to another without going into too much detail of his prior allegations. For instance, he claimed that BJP leader Subramanian Swamy is “trying to manipulate the AIIMS Medical Report”.
He went on to demand that Swamy and his associates be arrested.
That was not all. After Akshay Kumar announced that the game ‘FAU-G’ will be launched soon, Vibhor Anand said that he could say with a “200% surety” that it was the “same AI gaming project” which the late Sushant Singh Rajput was working on.
By October, the conspiracy theory started falling into place. He would make puzzling tweets in the form of riddles that appeared to suggest that he knew a lot more than he actually did. “Connect the dots” became his trademark lingo.
However, all of this is quite different from what he was saying in the immediate aftermath of the actor’s death. While he now lionizes Sushant Singh Rajput, earlier he had claimed that the real reason behind the actor’s depression was the money he owed to the underworld.
For all his antics, Vibhor Anand was arrested by the Mumbai Police on the 15th of October. It was a decision that was widely welcomes on all sides of the political spectrum. He was arrested by the Mumbai police on charges of spreading conspiracy theories regarding the death of Sushant Singh Rajput and making ‘false’ allegations against Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.
An article on a media outlet ‘Agency Reporter’ the same month stated, “Anand shared a tweet with pictures of Bollywood stars Salman Khan and Jacqueline Fernandes, as well as members of the British Royal family with clumsily photoshopped bloodshot eyes, claiming the Bollywood elite is involved in drug and child trafficking. In other videos, Anand claimed – baselessly – thatSalman Khan has a penchant for young boys and that Aditya Thackeray is a paedophile.” We could not confirm this on our own.
He was booked under Sections 509, 505(2), 500, 504 of IPC and Sec.67 of IT Act. Since then, he has been released and now, more than ever, his conspiracy theories are running absolutely wild. In November, he also claimed that he was assaulted and shared images of himself bloodied and bruised.
January 2021: Vibhor Anand loses it
By 2021, Vibhor Anand was a popular figure among certain sections of ‘SSR Warriors’ and his videos on YouTube were watched by lots and lots of people. He does not appear to have his own YouTube channel but live discussions featuring him always attract significant viewership.
The most outrageous claim that he has made so far is that Sushant Singh Rajput is still alive and he has even met him. Of course, he is careful not to mention his name specifically but the implications of his words is abundantly clear. Videos featuring him on YouTube have the title that say the actor is alive and he does not appear to have any objection to it.
And during a live sessions on YouTube, he has said very cryptically that the actor is alive and it was interpreted as such by his followers. Of course, he leaves enough room around for himself to later claim that SSR is ‘alive in his heart’ or some other such thing but that is not the message he conveyed on YouTube.
In the abovementioned video, on the 30th of December, he says that ‘Jacob is alive’. Jacob is a code word he uses for SSR. In the video, he says that he has met him and ‘Jacob’ is apparently extremely hurt with what has been happening.
On the 21st of January, SSR’s birthday, he said, “Thanks dear for meeting me again”.
But this is a complete turnaround from what he was saying earlier. If any reader was expecting him to make sense or some amount on consistency, they would have noticed by now that making complete about turns has become a core part of his identity.
For instance, previously, he has slandered the family of SSR and claimed that they are involved in his death.
Earlier, he has went to the extent of claiming that the “murder” of Sushant Singh Rajput was streamed live on the “Dark Web” and Shah Rukh Khan watched it all happen live.
On the 18th of January 2021, he claimed that SSR’s death was being investigated by 18 top agencies across the globe.
Vibhor Anand: A Fraud or a lunatic?
On the 23rd of January, Anand announced that he was taking a break from social media. “I would surely miss you all but be assured that I would be watching everything silently,” he said after declaring that he will be gone for a longer duration now.
Thus, it brings us to a question. Is Vibhor Anand a fraud or a lunatic with delusions of grandeur? People on social media suspect that he engages in such conduct in order to scam people off their money. We can neither confirm nor deny these allegations. However, what is evidently clear at this point is that he is not one to be trusted with your money.
Furthermore, it is quite evident that he has taken a lot of genuine fans of Sushant Singh Rajput on a merry go ride. It is abundantly clear that he is playing, either intentionally or otherwise, with the sentiments of these people. The Sushant Singh Rajput saga has seen a great many twists and turns over time. However, it is pretty safe to say that the craziest conspiracy theories have come from Vibhor Anand.
