According to the edit history of Singh’s Wikipedia page, an unregistered user replaced the words “India” with “Khalistan” at several locations on the profile at 12:28am India Standard Time (IST).

This user also edited his name to first read “Major Arshdeep Singh Langra” and, a minute later, to “Major Arshdeep Singh Bajwa”. This person also made some random changes to Singh’s game statistics.

The user replaced the word India to Khalistan in links cited to support claims on the page, leading to a purported timesofkhalistan.com that does not exist.

These changes were undone by an anonymous Wikipedia editor roughly 15 minutes later.

Wikipedia vandals often target people in the news. But such methods of online abuse is rare in India, and the specific nature of the vitriol in Singh’s case -- the targeting of his religious identity -- and the purported involvement of foreign actors could signal deliberate campaigns, domestic or foreign, to inflame social and political fault lines.

What prompted the malicious edits were some missed chances in the crucial closing stages of the arch rivals’ dramatic clash. In the 18th over, Singh dropped a sitter at point to give Asif Ali a reprieve against the bowling of legspinner Ravi Bishnoi. Asif, who had not scored any runs at that stage, went on to hit an eight-ball 16 before Arshdeep claimed his wicket in the last over but it proved too late.

Soon, a torrent of online abuse hit the Sikh cricketer, with much of the vitriol focussing on his religion. After the match, former skipper Virat Kohli backed Singh, saying that “anyone can make a mistake”.

Wikimedia Foundation confirmed it had received a communication from the Indian government on the incident. “The Wikipedia page of the cricketer was vandalised with false claims on September 4, however the wrongful edits were removed within minutes by Wikipedia’s volunteer community. Right now, the article on English Wikipedia is semi-protected (which allows edits by only trusted users) to restrict further vandalism on the page,” it said in a statement, adding that such vandalism “can occur in any open, online platform”.

It stated that it is a volunteer-led platform of over 295,000 contributors globally, including over 60,000 in India, who determine the editorial policy. The foundation, the statement added, has no role in this.

Wikipedia is a wiki, a collaborative database or service where anyone can add or edit content. While anyone is allowed to make or suggest edits, the service follows a strict logging mechanism.

The version history for Singh’s page shows that the user who made those changes was unregistered and was using the internet protocol (IP) address 39.41.171.125.

Looked up using an internet address “whois” query service showed that the IP address was likely in use in Pakistan’s Rawalpindi. The address was allocated to the Pakistan Telecommuication Company Limited (PTCL), Pakistan’s national telecoms provider (the equivalent of India’s BSNL).

“The offending edits were promptly removed by other editors yesterday. I would even suggest that the edits calling him a Kh*listani be redacted, which in Wiki terminology means that they cannot be read in the edit history by anyone reading previous versions of the article,” said Rohini Lakshané, a public policy researcher and a Wikipedia volunteer said on Monday.

Anyone can add or edit articles on Wikipedia, which, as on Monday, had over 6.45 million articles in English. This volunteer-based mechanism poses complications for any government plan to pull up Wikipedia.

“No intermediary operating in India can permit this type of misinformation and deliberate efforts to incitement and #userharm - violates our govts expectation of Safe & Trusted Internet,” junior minister for IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said in a tweet with screenshots of Singh’s defaced page.

Lakshané, on the possibility of summons, added: “If @GoI_Meity (ministry of electronics and IT) wants to legally pursue the editors, they will need to trace those who made the offending edits via IP addresses. The IPs are on public and permanent record in the edit history of the English Wikipedia article. That’s how Wikipedia editing works.”

Hours after the first vandalism, a second attempt was made to change Singh’s place of birth to Pakistan from India by another anonymous user with the IP address 41.58.51.244, which seemed to geolocate to Nigeria. This was undone three minutes later by a Wikipedia administrator, who then put Singh’s page under “protected” status citing “persistent vandalism”.

Protected status is usually in force for a small number of articles, typically those relating to popular topics, people or places.

Singh’s profile is protected till at least September 21.

It is not the first time that a player faced abuse online for a sporting moment. Last year Mohammed Shami became a target of abuse after India were thrashed by Pakistan in the T20 World Cup, with many honing in on his religious identity to call him a traitor and alleging he had taken money to throw the game.

On Monday, Singh’s abuse prompted an outpouring of support too with politicians as well as sports stars backing the cricketer.

”Stop criticising young @arshdeepsinghh. No one drops a catch purposely..we are proud of our boys .. Pakistan played better.. shame on such people who r putting our own guys down by saying cheap things on this platform bout Arsh and the team.. Arsh is GOLD,” said former India spinner Harbhajan Singh in a tweet.