FACT CHECK: Olympics gold medallist Neeraj Chopra's pro-farmer tweet is actually FAKE

After Neeraj Chopra became India’s first track and field gold medallist at Tokyo Olympics 2020, Twitter has been flooded with fake accounts pretending to be the athlete.  

Chopra hails from a farming family in Haryana, just like fellow Olympian Ravi Dahiya, who won bronze in wrestling. Soon, their exploits were being linked to the ongoing farmer protests in India.

Predictably, fake profiles started making fake statements, taking advantage of trending hashtags like #FarmersShineInOlympics and #FarmersProtest.

Amid all the confusion, a tweet in Hindi made allegedly by Chopra went viral. The tweet reportedly said, “There is no point in winning a medal if the farmers of the country are suffering due to atrocities by the government.” 

This tweet and the account that posted it have now been confirmed as fake. The tweet appears to have been deleted.

Before it was verified as fake, several Twitter users had already picked up the post and highlight it, linking Chopra to the ongoing confrontation between farmer groups and the government over India’s new farm laws.

The fake comment was posted from the Twitter handle ‘@neeraj_chopra_’ which closely resembles ‘@Neeraj_chopra1’, the Olympic gold medallist’s official handle on the social media platform. The fake account has at least 24,000 followers.

An investigation into the tweet from a leading media house found the fake Neeraj Chopra account was earlier named ‘@zara_sharif_’. The media house found that while an account with the name did not exist currently, there is a cached version, which reportedly mentions the account holder to be a Jamia Millia Islamia student.

As per the investigation, the Twitter id number of ‘@neeraj_chopra_’ is same as that of ‘@zara_sharif_’, which reveals it is the same account. While the name of any Twitter handle can be changed several times, the Twitter id number is permanent.