By Abhishek Kumar, Oishani Bhattacharya and Mohammed Zubair

On 9 November 2023, an Alt News journalist received a request from an X user to look into the authenticity of a donation drive by a user named Ritika Annie, who claimed to run an animal welfare body named ‘Helping Hooks’. We were alerted that this X account had been using the name and photos of an Instagram user.

When we matched the photos of Ritika Sheoran on Instagram with those posted by X user Ritika Annie, we found that they were the same. We contacted Ritika Sheoran and she responded to us by saying that she did not run the X handle @GoneGirlAnnie. She did not have an X account at all.

We also noted that the premium subscribed X handle @GoneGirlAnnie was initially being run by a user named Annie Thakur, which was later changed to Ritika Annie. The bio of this account said, ‘Co-founder at Helping Hooks Animal Welfare Society.’ We found @HelpingHooks on X. As per its bio, it is a ‘registered NGO based in Uttarakhand, India’ which works in animal welfare and wildlife rehabilitation. Its activities include rescuing, feeding and rehabilitating animals.

Impersonation

So, our initial investigation revealed that the account ‘Ritika Annie’ was not only using someone else’s images but also their name. Besides the name ‘Ritika Annie’, the account had also used the name ‘Annie Thakur’. The Gmail ID mentioned in the bio was ‘thakurannie716@gmail.com’.

At the time of this story being written, the account @GoneGirlAnnie does not exist and all the tweets shared by the account @HelpingHooks have been deleted. The last profile photo of @GoneGirlAnnie before it was deleted, which can be seen in this archive, is a photo uploaded on Instagram by Ritika Sheoran in October 2022.

We also found that in December-January, the account named Ritika Annie changed its name and handle at least twice, to @SaveAIndie and @AnamikaThakurr. When we checked the replies given to the @GoneGirlAnnie handle by using Twitter (X) advanced search, we found that both these handles (@SaveAIndie & @AnamikaThakurr) appeared in search results.

Read Full Story https://www.altnews.in/alt-news-investigation-multiple-handles-run-bogus-fundraisers-on-x-benefiting-a-certain-sandeep-mandal/