Viral video of girl crying over coffin is not Arshad Sharif’s daughter
Viral images and videos of a girl crying next to a dead body are from Senator Usman Kakar’s funeral
Claim: Viral images and videos of a girl crying over a body in a coffin apparently show the daughter of journalist Arshad Sharif, who was recently killed in Kenya.
Fact: The images and videos show Senator Usman Kakar’s daughter grieving her father who was murdered in 2019.
On 23 October 2022, Pakistani journalist and news anchor Arshad Sharif was shot and killed in Kajiado, Kenya. Sharif was on the run owing to the threat of arrest back home for his reporting and comments on the military’s intervention into civilian politics.
On 26 October 2022, videos and images which purportedly showed his daughter grieving next to his dead body were widely shared on social media.
Fact or Fiction?
A reverse image search of key frames from the video reveals that these posts actually show the body of senator Usman Kakar, who died in 2021.
Image of Usman Kakar and his daughter falsely associated with the journalist Arshad Sharif on social media.
The same video and image were shared by the local press in Balochistan after his death in June 2021. This video shows Usman Kakar’s daughter in the same dress later on at his burial.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 4-day period since 23 October 2022 to 26 October 2022 using the following search terms:
- “Arshad” “Sharif” “daughter”
- “ارشد” “شریف” “جنازا”
- “ارشد” “شریف” “بیٹی”
We found more than 100 posts on Facebook, which were interacted with over 49,150 times. Some of them can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The viral video shows senator Usman Kakar’s daughter crying at his funeral, not Arshad Sharif’s daughter.
