On July 16, there was a report about a fake follower case bust by Mumbai Police. Since then a lot of names have been spoken about whose Instagram and Twitter accounts had dubious followers. Last year, many reports suggested that Priyanka Chopra, BTS, Deepika Padukone's social media accounts had fake followers in abundance. The racket was busted after Mumbai Police started their investigation on singer Bhumi Trivedi's complaint about a fake profile under her name on Instagram. Now ANI reported that Badshah has been called for questioning in the same case. This is the second day of his questioning. ‘Fake Social Media Followers Used by Bollywood Celebs And Others for Increasing Publicity, Trolling Someone, Stealing Data,’ Says Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh

As a part of the investigation, the cops were supposed to question 18 celebrities who apparently used services of fraudulent websites to increase their followers. But the number has already reached 20.

Bhoomi Trivedi had told Mumbai Mirror earlier, "A few of my industry friends and followers recently told me they had received a message from a PR agency claiming they had got my Instagram account verified for Rs 4,000. I was shocked to see the fraudsters using screenshots of a conversation between them and the person who runs the fake account to gain the trust of others." If you remember, a few years back, Amitabh Bachchan had rejoiced in a cryptic way when a report on a publication suggested that Shah Rukh Khan has more fake followers on Twitter. SRK had toppled him as the most followed celebrity on Twitter which had left AB quite angry.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 07, 2020 12:49 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).