Mumbai, July 13 : Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan's extended family on Twitter dropped by over 424,000, while Shah Rukh Khan's followers depleted by over 362,141 and Salman Khan lost 340,884 followers, among other film celebrities as a result of the 'sanitisation' of the micro-blogging platform.

Twitter decided to sanitise the platform by removing inactive and locked accounts. So, a lot of popular names from the film industry ended up with reduced followers.

SocialBlade.com that tracks the number of Twitter followers on a daily basis, had a tab on the count, and said Aamir Khan lost 316,900-plus followers, while Priyanka Chopra lost 354,830 followers and Deepika Padukone lost 288,298.

The micro-blogging platform was yet to come up with an official statement on this.

Twitter earlier this week announced it will remove locked accounts -- which are disabled owing to suspicious activity -- from follower counts across profiles globally. The locked accounts are different from spam or bots and in most cases, these accounts were created by real people.

The move is likely to affect high-profile users the most.

Celebrities like Divya Dutta, Onir and Apurva Asrani reacted on losing followers overnight.

Divya, who currently has a following of 493,000 fans on the micro-blogging website, tweeted on Thursday night: "Aiyyo, what happened Twitter... Sudden drop of thousands of followers in one hour!"

Filmmaker Onir wrote: "I just realised I lost 1,000 overnight... Same pinch... Laugh out loud Twitter India. What's the secret?"

Writer-editor Apurva Asrani tweeted: "I lost 500 followers overnight. Wondering if this is the clean up of bots that Twitter mentioned earlier."

 

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Madikeri (Karnataka) (PTI): Four people were arrested for allegedly assaulting, illegally confining and attempting to extort money from a 39-year-old businessman who was lured through a honeytrap set up on social media, police said on Monday.

The accused have been identified as Rachana, Malati, Darshan and Ravi.

Police said efforts are underway to nab the remaining suspects involved in the incident, which occurred on December 12 in Madikeri, the district headquarters of Kodagu.

According to the complaint, the victim, a resident of Maddur taluk in Mandya district, was befriended by a woman identified as Rachana through Facebook, who later sought financial assistance and received Rs 5,000 from him via PhonePe on November 28.

When he asked her to return the money, the woman allegedly asked him to travel to Mysuru or Kushalnagar, promising to meet him.

The police said the woman later called the victim to Madikeri on December 12 and took him to a house near the market area, where they spent some time and consumed alcohol in the evening.

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Later that night, citing an emergency, the woman left the house. After her departure, three men allegedly broke into the house and attacked the victim, assaulting him with a stick and the handle of a sword, causing injuries to his face, mouth, chest and leg, the FIR stated.

The complainant alleged that he was forcibly confined, stripped and a nude video of him was recorded. The accused also allegedly threatened him with a toy gun, demanding Rs 50 lakh and warning that the video would be uploaded on social media if the money was not paid.

Police said the victim was held captive and somehow managed to escape in the early hours of December 13. However, after he escaped, the accused allegedly attempted to kidnap him in an autorickshaw, an incident that was captured on CCTV cameras.

Based on his complaint at the Madikeri Town police station, a case was registered under Sections 310(2) (dacoity), 127(2) (wrongful confinement), 118(1) (voluntarily causing hurt or grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means) and 3(5) (common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, a senior police officer said.

“Four accused, including two women, have been arrested. Efforts are on to nab two more absconding accused. Further investigation is on,” he added.