Did Elon Musk say 'Twitter Tere Tukde Honge' gang will also have to pay $8 for blue tick?

Hyderabad: A screenshot of a Hindi tweet reportedly by Elon Musk is circulating on social media. In the tweet, Musk says that the gang planning to break Twitter will also have to pay $8 for the blue tick.

The tweet reads, "The 'Twitter Tere Tukde Honge' gang will also have to pay $8."

The claim comes after Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, announced that Twitter will charge $8 monthly to users who want a blue tick that indicates a verified account.

Journalist Faye D'Souza shared the screenshot on her Facebook page.

Fact Check

NewsMeter searched Elon Musk's Twitter page and found his handle is "@elonmusk" while the viral screenshot has the handle "@iawoolford." The viral tweet was tweeted on 5 November from an iPad. We did not find any such tweet on Musk's account from 5 November, and we also noticed that all his recent tweets were from an iPhone.

Further, we searched for the handle @iawoolford on Twitter and found the viral tweet pinned on the timeline of the account. We noticed that the user has tweeted many tweets in Hindi. We went through the account and found a video posted on 22 September in which a man can be seen reading a Hindi poem by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar.

Taking this as a cue, we searched for "@iawoolford" on Google and found an Instagram account of Ian Woolford with the same username. The bio section states that he is a Hindi professor from Melbourne, Australia. After watching videos posted on the Instagram account, we confirmed that he is the same man who is reading Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's poem in the video posted on Twitter.

Dr. Ian Woolford is a lecturer of Hindi at La Trobe University. He heads the Hindi language program and teaches courses in South Asian culture. Apart from Hindi, he is well-versed in other Indian languages like Urdu, Sanskrit, Bhojpuri, and Maithili.

During our investigation, we also came across a 2016 article published by ScoopWhoop that said Woolford's Hindi tweets are "making Indians go crazy." According to the article, Woolford's affair with Hindi started at the age of 12, and he grew up singing bhajans and folk songs. The article carries embedded tweets of Woolford which now displays Elon Musk's name.

It is evident that Ian Woolford's Twitter account is impersonating Elon Musk by using his name, display picture and bio. Hence, the screenshot is misleading.

Update: Ian Woolford's Twitter account has been suspended.