A screenshot of a Tweet by IAF wing commander Abhinandan Varthaman popped up in my Facebook feed which surprised me because the tweet had criticised Indian media of misusing his name to spread hate for some TRP. The tweet in the screenshot reads "a big thankyou to all the pakistanis who supported me in my bad time when even my country's media was busy in taking my name just to spread HATE and get some TRP, I will never forget. SHUKRIYA."

The screenshot was uploaded by a Facebook user Adv Gurdeep Asa who works in Punjab and Haryana High Court, Chandigarh as per his profile. His post was shared by one of my college-mate so I decided to find out the truth about this Tweet.

When I searched for this profile on Twitter, I found that a user Zahid Malik had also claimed that Abhinandan has tweeted.

About the Twitter Handle @AFAbhinandan

The Twitter handle @AFAbhinandan was created on 28th Feb. Here is the archived link of his profile.

We also found that the tweet in the screenshot is real and it was tweeted by this profile on 28th Feb. This was the second tweet of this profile. Once we established that the screenshot of the tweet is not fake or morphed, we had to identify whether this account is real or not. So, we looked at other tweets of this profile. The first tweet of the profile conveys the message to the world that Pakistan army is nice and they allow IAF wing commander Abhinandan to open his Twitter account.

On March 1, the profile tweeted that the Popular Singer Adnan Sami is a Pakistani undercover agent.

In another tweet, he wished to fly Pakistan's F16 Jet and is tired off old trash crappy Indian MiG21. His other tweet reads:

I might be the only Pilot of the world who has done nothing for the country, still people of my country are calling me a HERO, they should be calling Prime Minister Imran Khan and his respected Army the real HERO, hope we can have BIG HEARTS like them #PakistanZindabad

On 2nd March, he tweeted to claim that he met defense minister of India to tell her about Pakistan's hospitality and his decision to represent Pakistan in all wars.

In the pinned Tweet, he is thanking Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan with a hashtag #PakistanZindabad

From his tweets, it is very clear that it is a fake account which is posting pro-Pakistan tweets. It is highly unlikely that an IAF pilot will tweet such things. Since the account is fake, the claim that Abhinandan has accused Indian media of spreading hate is false.