Hirra Azmat
Srinagar: No sooner than the 23-year-old Nadia Beig’s name trended on social media for her success in UPSC exams on Tuesday, she had to face another challenge.
According to her, a flurry of fake Twitter and Instagram handles impersonating her name and photos started showing up. And with them followed the netizens taking screenshots of some of the controversial posts on such handles and attributing the same to Nadia.
A resident of Punzwa Vilgam village in Kupwara, Nadia became the first girl from the remote hamlet to have qualified the exhaustive UPSC civil services examination securing 350th rank.
Anxious, the UPSC qualifier had to report the fake Twitter account @Nadia_Beigh, which surprisingly was deleted soon after.
According to Nadia’s brother, Faizan, she was not on Twitter at all and was compelled to open up her Twitter account @BeigNadia to counter the fake ones on Tuesday.
She posted her first tweet on it on Wednesday which read: “I have written to twitter regarding fake accounts operating in my name .Please check the veracity of statements, facts and opinions before circulating them.”
She also posted the screenshots of the official acknowledgement from Twitter about her reporting the impersonation.
“Lot of frivolous content is being put out through these accounts. We had contacted the Cyber police in this regard and they have managed to block one account since yesterday,” said Faizan.
“Her Twitter handle is @BeigNadia and her Instagram account is @nadia_beig. These are the only ones that are genuine. There are atleast two fake Instagram accounts active in her name nadia.beigh_ias and iasnadiabeigh. We have reported both of them,” he said.
“We are greatly distressed by this whole thing and request the people not to believe in the content coming through these accounts,” Faizan added.
A graduate in economics honours from Jamia Milia Islamia, Nadia had been preparing hard for the civil services since her college days. “I had little concept of civil services in my higher secondary. When I was in university, my interest started growing in civil services. I took coaching for sociology from the residential academy of Jamia Millia,” Nadia told The Kashmir Monitor on Tuesday.
“Both of my parents are in the teaching profession. My two young sisters are studying MBBS in SKIMS and my brother has done BBA. When I was away from home last year, I wanted to talk to my parents but could not due to the communication gag. I dedicate my success to my parents and my siblings who always stood by me,” she said.
