By Archis Chowdhury
An account impersonating Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia has gone viral on X, with many users, including a few celebrities and public figures, being misled into believing it's Kapadia's real account.
BOOM found that the account does not belong to Kapadia, and has gone by several different handles before impersonating Kapadia with the username @PayalKapadial. We also got in touch with Kapadia, who confirmed to us that the account was run by an impersonator. She further told us that she didn't have an account on X before, and had recently made one with the handle @PayalKapadia86, following the case of impersonation.
Kapadia has been in the news lately, after her latest film All We Imagine As Light won the Grand Prix at the Festival de Cannes 2024, along with an eight-minute standing ovation. The account started impersonating Kapadia in the backdrop of growing interest around her, and her film, on the internet.
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Using the username @PayalKapadial - with over 11,000 followers - the account started sharing posts by other celebrities and public figures congratulating Kapadia on the big win at Cannes.
The account also quote-tweet posts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi congratulating Kapadia.
Soon, many users started mistaking this handle for Kapadia's own account, and tagged it in their congratulatory tweets.
However, upon closer look at the handle @PayalKapadial, we found this account posting primarily on Bihar politics.
We looked at responses to older tweets by the account, which indicated that the account went by the handles @JamiaSalafia and @K_L_SharmaINC.
