Former Indian cricketer Venkatesh Prasad on Saturday tweeted what many social media users believe was a cryptic tweet targeting Asian Cricket Council (ACC) President Jay Shah, who is also secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
“It takes one corrupt, arrogant guy to take away the hard work of an organisation that is generally non-corrupt and get a stamp of corruption on the whole leadership, not just on a micro level but at a large level.”
Prasad’s tweet made many X (former Twitter) users speculate if the former cricketer had targeted BCCI and Jay Shah, son of Indian Home Minister Amit Shah. However, Prasad soon deleted his tweet.
Indian journalist and fact-checker Mohammed Zubair posted a screenshot of the tweet deleted by Prasad.
AltNews co-founder Zubair was not the only one who posted a screenshot of Prasad’s deleted tweet. Many news outlets did a story on it as well. However, Prasad chose to target and abuse Zubair in a racist and bigoted tweet.
Prasad quote-tweeted Zubair and wrote: “Haha.. Says a serial hate- monger, who has put so many lives in danger for his agenda. You disguising as a fact-checker is like Terrorists talking about peace. Now post that you need money to survive and ask for donation for your website, no shame in living off by fooling people.”
In response, Zubair said that he hopes Prasad will be forgiven for his tweet on BCCI by his “political masters for compensating by abusing and comparing” him to “terrorists”.
One user pointed out that Venkatesh Prasad’s manager is Amritanshu Gupta, a known right-wing BJP supporter, which is why Prasad’s language is of right-wing trolls.
Many X users called out the former Indian cricketer for his bigoted and hateful tweet against a Muslim journalist in India.
Prasad posted a new version of his deleted tweet a day later.
