Claim: A clip shows Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif being intimate with a woman.
Fact: This claim is false as the video originally depicts an unknown individual, not Shehbaz Sharif.
On 6 October, an Indian user on X, whose posts have been previously debunked by Soch Fact Check, shared an alleged video (archive) of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif being intimate with a woman. The description of the X post reads: “BREAKING: An old intimate video of the current Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif has created a stir in Pakistani politics after it went viral.
There are demands for the resignation of Shahbaz Sharif who returned after visiting America & doing a property deal in London.”
This article only fact-checks the video in the claim
Fact or Fiction?
Results from reverse-image searches of keyframes from the video and facial recognition tools, confirmed that the clip does not show the incumbent Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif.
First, a reverse-image search led to videos posted on Instagram accounts, which feature explicit content. Both videos match the one from the claim. Although the clips only offered limited details about these individuals’ identities, at the 0:35 mark, we can see a close-up shot of the man sleeping in the video. It is evident in this shot, that the man is not Shehbaz Sharif but someone else.
Keyframe from the Instagram video that shows the person is not Shehbaz Sharif.
Further reverse-image searches of these Instagram videos did not yield any information on the identities of the individuals either.
Soch Fact Check then used facial recognition technology to identify the people in the video by running a frame of the woman’s face through the tool. Specifically, ProFaceFinder, a facial recognition and reverse-image search tool, yielded multiple results leading to a TikTok account (archive) with the username “shabanababar6”. The account appears to belong to the woman depicted in the video.
The video being fact-checked was shared by this user on TikTok here (archive) on 2 September, which is the earliest instance of the video we found online. The man who appears in this video is the same person who appears in several of the other TikTok posts on this account. After analysing his appearance in the other posts, Soch Fact Check concludes that the man in the video being fact-checked is clearly not Shehbaz Sharif. This is shown in a comparative visual below:
On the left is the man from the TikTok posts. Shehbaz Sharif’s portrait is on the right.
Virality
The X post garnered 3 million views and was liked 12,000 times.
It also appeared on X here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On Instagram here.
Conclusion: Posts claiming that a viral video shows Shehbaz Sharif being intimate with a woman are false. The original video features someone else and not the incumbent Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Background image in cover photo: Dawn
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