Days after Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair unleashed his troll army on digital strategist and consultant Amritanshu Gupta for ‘managing’ the Twitter handle of ex-Indian cricketer Venkatesh Prasad, Gupta has said that he has started getting threats. Gupta said that Zubair has ensured that he gets threatening calls and intimidating messages by deliberately misinterpreting his tweets.
Amritanshu Gupta posted on X, “So Mohammad Zubair has ensured i get threatening calls and intimidating messages by deliberately misinterpreting. I have been on Twitter for 14 years & he could find 3 tweets with “Muslim” keywords search and 1 of them was a sarcastic comment on journalist citing an article in HT.”
So Mohammad Zubair has ensured i get threatening calls and intimidating messages by deliberately misinterpreting.
— Amritanshu Gupta (@AmritanshuGupta) September 14, 2023
I have been on Twitter for 14 years & he could find 3 tweets with “Muslim”keywords search and 1 of them was a sarcastic comment on journalist citing an article in HT pic.twitter.com/Fm2XL36Rod
This comes after Zubair launched an online attack on Gupta after Venkatesh Prasad called Zubair ‘serial hate monger’, responding to Zubair’s comment on him after his criticism of the BCCI and ACC over the mismanagement of the ongoing Asia Cup.
While the tweet exchange was between Zubair and Prasad, Zubair for some reason pulled Amritanshu Gupta into the debate, insinuating that the tweets by the cricketing legend were actually drafted by Gupta. The ‘fact checker’ also got angry after finding out that Gupta admired the work of PM Modi, interviewed BJP leader Smriti Irani and did not hold Rahul Gandhi in high esteem.
Zubair then posted 8-9 years old tweets by Amritanshu Gupta containing the word ‘Muslim’ to insinuate that he is anti-Muslim. One such tweet from 2015 says, ‘In secular India Gujarati Axar Patel has got a Muslim Amla out’, which is clearly a joke and does not exhibit any anti-Muslim hatred. Gupta said that his 2015 tweet calling Nirbhaya’s rapist a devout Muslim was also a sarcastic comment on Sagarika Ghosh citing a linked Hindustan Times report.
The third tweet pointed out by Zubair is actually a clarification by Gupta to OpIndia’s Nupur Sharma over a comment by Sadhguru. Sadhguru had tweeted that ‘if Yoga is Hindu, gravity must be Christian’, causing outrage against him. Gupta then said that there was a context to Sadhguru’s tweet, which was media outrage over claims that Muslims were denied Yoga.
Nupur ji, this was in context of fake media outrage lst yr Muslims r denied/denying Yoga.Was used as a metaphor@RituRathaur
— Amritanshu Gupta (@AmritanshuGupta) June 21, 2016
Therefore, there was nothing anti-Muslim in all three tweets cited by Zubair, but he still labelled the tweets as anti-Muslim. With this, Zubair gave a cue to his Islamist supporters to go after Gupta, the same way his supporters had gone after former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, resulting in the beheading of several Hindus by Islamists and Jihadis.
Now the same episode is repeating again, and a person is getting threats from Islamists for no reason. Zubair is targeting him because he is assuming that the tweets are Prasad are written by him. After that he deliberately wrongly interpreted Gupta’s benign tweets containing the word Muslim and labelled them as anti-Muslim, causing his troll army to attack Gupta and send him death threats.
The Background of the Controversy
On Saturday (September 9), Mohammed Zubair targeted Venkatesh Prasad over a deleted tweet on the mismanagement of World Cup 2023 ticket sales by the BCCI. The former cricket lambasted the fake news peddler for hatemongering on social media.
“Haha…Says a serial hate-monger, who has put so many lives in danger for his agenda. You disguising as a fact-checker is like Terrorists talking about peace. Now post that you need money to survive and ask for donation for your website, no shame in living off by fooling people,” he tweeted.
Haha.. Says a serial hate- monger, who has put so many lives in danger for his agenda. You disguising as a fact-checker is like Terrorists talking about peace.
— Venkatesh Prasad (@venkateshprasad) September 9, 2023
Now post that you need money to survive and ask for donation for your website, no shame in living off by fooling… https://t.co/CjPrtAdC24 pic.twitter.com/ei16dx1wPp
Prasad was soon targeted by the close-knit and vicious ecosystem of Congress leaders, leftists and Islamists on X (formerly Twitter). The ex-cricketer held his ground and refused to bow down to the bullying by the coterie.
“There are enough instances of this guy peddling his agenda, editing videos conveniently, working selectively and biasedly against a political party to make money. He is anything but a fact-checker. One doesn’t have to be blind to not see the reality in this. Regards,” he responded to one of the supporters of Zubair.
The dubious ‘fact checker’ was also left red-faced when Venkatesh Prasad reposted the deleted tweet, which was used by him to target the Indian cricketer.
It takes one corrupt, arrogant guy to take away the hardwork of an otherwise non-corrupt organisation and spoil the reputation of an entire organisation & the impact isn’t just micro but at a macro level. This is true in every field, be it politics,sports, journalistm, corporate.
— Venkatesh Prasad (@venkateshprasad) September 10, 2023
With no comeback left, Zubair found the media manager of Venkatesh Prasad i.e. Amritanshu Gupta and unleashed his troll army on the latter. This is in line with his past antics, where he had led his online lynch mob after people for virtue of their different political ideologies. And now repeating history, Gupta is getting death threats from the troll army of Zubair.
