The Hate Factory 2: Kakavaani continues to spread hate on social media

A ‘journalist’ going by the “काकावाणी” on Twitter has a notorious history with social media use. Currently, his handle @007QaQaAli has 20.5k followers on Twitter. He also has an Instagram and a Facebook account with massive followings. His Instagram handle is @007alisohrab and has 76,300 followers. On the other hand, his Facebook account has a whopping 2,74,000 followers. We have previously written on the the man and his hateful words before but with this piece we shall further examine into who are his networks and followers and see more hateful tweets made by him.

With our previous investigation we had found out that his name is Ali Sohrab was arrested in 2019 for contentious tweets. During the investigation, it was revealed that Sohrab used 8 different accounts on twitter and runs a coaching centre in Delhi. While he has denied that he does not belong to a particular ideology, his tweets try to create a narrative of their own.

After his arrest, Sohrab has had multiple accounts suspended and now relies on voicing hate speech through sarcasm and twisting narratives so as to avoid getting arrested again.

Here are the focal points of the analysis given below:

• Kakvaani’s list of highest number of tags: @007qaqaali with 450 tags, @dukedhump with about 25 tags and @champarni_tariq with about the same number of tags.
• .The top hashtags used by him are #Afghanistan, #savetripuramuslims, #الهند_تقتل_المسلمين (India is killing muslims) and #
• The world cloud of his tweet is mostly dominated with words such as ‘Hunood’, ‘Taliban’, ‘Musalmano’ and ‘Afghanistan’.
• His account is followed by 5 verified accounts namely: NargisBano_, IAMCouncil, Razvi__Adil amongst others.
• He displays a pro-Taliban stance and a frequently engages in hate speech.

Analysis:

According to our analysis, we can see that Sohrab was most active on Twitter around August 15,2021 post which the number of tweets made by him daily declined considerably.

1. Post Timeline:

According to our analysis, we can see that Sohrab was most active on Twitter around August 15,2021 post which the number of tweets made by him daily declined considerably.

2. Accounts Tagged:

Here is a list of accounts that have been frequently tagged by Kakavaani: @007qaqaali with 450 tags, @dukedhump with about 25 tags and @champarni_tariq with about the same number of tags.

3. Hashtags Used:

Sohrab tweets every single day and uses popular hashtags to spread hate through them .The top hashtags used by him are #Afghanistan, #savetripuramuslims, #الهند_تقتل_المسلمين (India is killing muslims) and #islamophobia_in_india. He has used #Afghanistan the most using it over 57 times in total.

4. Wordcloud:

The world cloud of his tweet is mostly dominated with words such as ‘Hunood’, ‘Taliban’, ‘Musalmano’  and ‘Afghanistan’. It must be noted that Sohrab uses the words ‘hunood’ and ‘libboos’ to denote Hindus and Liberals.

5. Verified Followers:

His account is followed by 5 verified accounts namely:  NargisBano_, IAMCouncil, Razvi__Adil amongst others. We have previously published a report on IAMCouncil’s involvement in the Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference. You can read the report here.

6. Quoted Accounts:

Sohrab has a habit of arguing with his adversaries by quoting their tweets and then responding to them with his take. The top quoted accounts by him are : 007QaQaAli, ShyamMeeraSingh, Muslim__news.

7. Network Graph:

Here is a complete network graph of everyone Sohrab interacts with his twitter account. Each of the little dots is a twitter account that Sohrab engages with.

8. Most popular and hateful tweets:

As previously mentioned, Sohrab’s tweets are very hateful in nature, often posted to incited violence and discontent between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Some of his tweets also show that he is perhaps a Taliban supporter because some of his tweets actually praise the Taliban for their ‘work’.

9. Most engaged followers: 

Sohrab no doubt has a following on Twitter but is frequently retweeted by only a few people who really believe in his ideology.

All of these users belong to the same hardline ideology of Sohrab where religion is above all. Here is an example of the kind of tweets that have been made by his networks.

https://twitter.com/YasirPost/status/1453255651199791111

The narrative this account tries to create not only is of violence and disharmony but also systematic racism and gas lighting his audience into believing something that is completely false. And this thirst for hate speech is relentless in nature.  Despite having been arrested for his tweets in the past, Sohrab posts abusive and hateful tweets every single day on all his social media platforms. With the currently political climate and the increasing communal tension in the country, it is people like Sohrab who may pose a threat to the fabric of the nation.

The blatant support of Taliban and their customs should be looked into further to see if he has any ties with the organisation in any way. The internet can be a wonderful place to learn and gather knowledge but people like Sohrab, whose words clearly have an influence upon others should not be promoted at any cost.