On Monday morning, it was discovered that Shoaib Akhtar’s YouTube channel was blocked in India, right after India had banned numerous accounts from Pakistan. While Akhtar’s channel is not among those officially banned, fans were unable to find his channel while searching on YouTube. People can still watch old videos from the channel, although the channel itself is no longer there. Akhtar is popular in India among cricket fans and has over the years participated in various cricket-based discussions in the media.
He isn’t the only one suffering from this, as other former Pakistani cricketers like Rashid Latif and Basit Ali had their YouTube channels restricted as well, despite the fact that their channels are not even in the official ban list. Some banned channels are along the lines of being suspended, while from some others, old videos might be watched.
It is not clear whether Akhtar’s channel was an oversight or will be included in another list to be released shortly. After the deadly terror attack on people in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir that left 26 dead, many among whom were tourists, certain YouTube accounts in India were banned in pursuance of recommendations from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
As the government informed, the bans on Pakistani YouTube channels were due to the promotion of negative narratives and false propaganda against India and its armed forces concerning the said incident. Some of the officially confirmed blocked channels are Dawn News, ARY NEWS, Geo News, etc.
