A day after India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani threw a lifeline to his younger brother Anil Ambani by helping him repay a large portion of the debt the latter owed to Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson, the hashtag 'MukeshNitaSaveAnil' started trending on Twitter.
Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications paid ₹460 crore on Monday, less than 24-hours ahead of the March 19 deadline set by the Supreme Court to repay dues.
Failure to adhere to it would have invited a three-month jail term to Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani. (Read more here )
In a public statement on March 18 the junior Ambani thanked his elder brother and sister-in-law, "My sincere and heartfelt thanks to my respected elder brother, Mukesh, and Nita, for standing by me during these trying times, and demonstrating the importance of staying true to their strong family values by extending this timely support. I and my family are grateful and deeply touched with their gesture."
News of the repayment was widely reported on Monday itself. However, the following day several Twitter users started pointing out that they had spotted similar content being tweeted by different Twitter accounts using the hashtag #MukeshNitaSaveAnil.
BOOM found that the accounts which were pointed out by Meghnad, a policy professional and columnist, were suspended by Twitter
A spokesperson from Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) declined to comment.
BOOM Investigates: #MukeshNitaSaveAnil
BOOM did a simple Twitter search using the common sentences and found examples of similar tweets with the hashtag 'MukeshNitaSaveAnil' showing that the same sentence was copy pasted by different users.
A simple Twitter search sprung up the same sentences like ''Ambani family proved that they also care about family and respect family values ...," used by different Twitter accounts with the images of Mukesh Ambani and his wife Nita Ambani.
Sentence 1: "Ambani family proved that they also care about family and respect family values..."
Twitter search Sentence 2: Mukesh Ambani cleared Anil Ambani's dues
, "Mukesh Ambani cleared Anil Ambani's dues and I am in love with his nature."
Identical tweets on #MukeshNitaSaveAnil Sentence 3: "Ambani's proves it These are true Indian values where the family does not talk before"
Twitter Influencers used to trend the hashtag?
BOOM found several self-declared influencer accounts tweeting using the hashtag.
Timeline of self-declared Twitter influencer 'Sanu Vishwakarma' A dormant account gets busy
BOOM found an account named 'Fayaz Khan' (@Shaadyboyz) that had joined Twitter in April 2018, and had only two tweets till December 2018.
But on March 19, 2019, it had tweeted 35 times using the hashtag and praising Mukesh Ambani tweeting content similar to what other accounts were tweeting.
Timeline of Fayaz Khan Another Twitter user named 'Ritabrata Dutta' (@i_ritabrata ) tweeted 38 times with images of Nita and Mukesh.
A third Twitter account named 'Pooja' (@RazziliciousR__ ) also tweeted 31 times using the same images and sentences.
BOOM found influencer Twitter accounts unusually tweeting several times on the day using the hashtag which is being claimed the primary reason for the hashtag trending.
The accounts did not showcase any bot activity and seemed to be tweeted by human users.