The Indian Government decided to take action against the social media accounts of top Pakistan athletes as part of the diplomatic and digital retaliation to the brutal terrorist attack in Pahalgam.
New Delhi: The Instagram accounts of several Pakistani cricketers such as Babar Azam, Muhammed Rizwan, Shoaib Akhtar have been withheld in India, as per a legal request. The action comes in the wake of escalating tension between India and Pakistan following the Pahalgam terror attack, which killed 26 tourists. Earlier, several players from Pakistan had turned social media into a virtual battlefield provoking several Indian players.
Former Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi had made a controversial statement against the Indian Army, calling them ‘useless’ for their inability to protect the people. In response, Indian cricketer Shikhar Dhawan criticised him. In his post, Dhawan reminded Afridi about Pakistan's defeat to India in 1999 and questioned him, asking, "already itna gire ho, aur kitna giroge (you have fallen down so much already, how much more you will fall?)". Dhawan also advised Afridi to stop making "unreasonable" comments and to focus on the progress of his own country. He ended his post by expressing pride in the Indian Army. Afridi then retaliated to this comment by taking a ‘chai’ jibe at Dhawan.
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The Indian Government decided to take action against the social media accounts of top Pakistan athletes as part of the diplomatic and digital retaliation to the brutal terrorist attack in Pahalgam. Shoaib Akhtar's YouTube channel was recently blocked for disseminating provocative and communally sensitive content, spreading false and misleading narratives, and circulating misinformation against India, its Army, and security agencies. His channel had 3.81 million subscribers at the time of restriction. YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, took down Akhtar’s channel based on the legal request by the government.
The account of Pakistan's Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem was also blocked. The legal request was sent by the Indian Government to Instagram to restrict access to Nadeem Arshad’s Instagram account in India. Users tried to attempt access to Pakistan javelin star’s Instagram account ‘arshadnadeem29’ and they came across a message stating ‘Account not available in India. This is because we complied with a legal request to restrict this content.’
