X user impersonates Sonu Nigam, makes political comments: It’s not me, I quit Twitter seven years ago
As X user Sonu Nigam Singh impersonates Sonu Nigam, makes political comments, the singer says the incident is ‘alarming’; plans to take action against him.
Singer Sonu Nigam quit X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2017, citing a lack of respect for freedom of speech. But he is now in dire straits again with regard to the micro-blogging site, as a user, who has a verified account in the name of Sonu Nigam, is being misperceived as the Padma Shri recipient. In fact, on June 4 — the day the Lok Sabha election results were out — the user made political statements that were quoted by some news channels as the singer’s views.
Talking to us exclusively just before taking off for his New Zealand-Australia tour, Nigam says, “I wonder how people, including the news channels that mistook him for me, didn’t do their basic sanity check by reading the description of the account. His handle says Sonu Nigam Singh and the description says that he’s a criminal lawyer from Bihar.”
The singer, who has been busy juggling film and independent projects,and concerts across the world, adds, “This is exactly the kind of nastiness that forced me to quit Twitter seven years ago. I don’t believe in making any sensational political remarks and I only focus on my work. But yeh incident alarming hai, not just for me, but also my family’s safety.”
Ask if he plans to take some action against the user, whose account is being followed by India Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Cabinet Minister Piyush Goyal, among others, and the singer says, “This user has been doing this for a while. I’m often inundated with screenshots of his tweets from my well-wishers. My team reached out to him and insisted he fixed his handle name and stopped pretending to be me, as millions of people are being mislead by the use of my surname. I’m sure we will find a way to fix this.”