After ex-PM’s arrest, Twitter followers of Hussain Nawaz surge

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2018-07-18T02:17:38+05:00 MUHAMMAD ASAD CHAUDHRY

ISLAMABAD - The number of followers on the Twitter account of Hussain Nawaz Sharif is increasing with each passing day since the arrest of his father Nawaz Sharif and sister Maryam Nawaz and their shifting to Adiala Jail Rawalpindi.

Former premier Nawaz Sharif and daughter Maryam were arrested following their conviction and sentence announced by an accountability court in the Avenfeild Reference.

A twitter handle @Hussain_NSharif was activated on the name of Hussain Nawaz Sharif in November 2017 but the same was not being actively used and only five tweets were made during the last eight months.

However, on July 8, a return schedule of the former premier from London was announced by the same account while it was also used to share the ‘miserable condition’ faced by his father during his first night in the Adiala jail.

Since then the number of followers of the said twitter handle is increasing day by day as there were 13,900 (13.9K) followers on Saturday, 20,500 (20.5K) on Monday while the number reached 22,200(22.2K) till filing of this story.

A large number of prominent personalities especially from print and electronic media have also been following this account during the last couple of days, which is apparently an effort to remain in touch with latest announcements possibly made by Sharif family through this account.

It is a well-known fact that the daughter of former primer, Maryam Nawaz Sharif was running a social media cell and she was quite active in commenting on political developments, sharing her thoughts and updating the followers about different decisions via her twitter handle @ MaryamNSharif having 4.75 million followers.

However, she is now unable to use electronic gadgets in the jail and it is might possible that the Sharif family would use younger Sharif's account as their mouthpiece on social media.

So far the said account is not fully functional as compared to the account used by Maryam Nawaz in the past. Furthermore, Twitter does not yet verify the account but nobody from the PML-N or Sharif family denied this account as original one while a number of media organisations also carried tweets from this account for publication or broadcast.

Meanwhile, it was also transpired in the monitoring of social media accounts that another twitter handle @MuhamadJSafdar, which is maintained by the fans of Muhammad Junaid Safdar, the son of Maryam Nawaz Sharif, also found an increase in number of followers. On Monday, the number of followers for the account was 13,100 (13.1K) while it reached 14,800 (14.8K) till filing of this story.

 

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