Claim: An image shows former MQM leader Altaf Hussain hospitalised and in critical condition
Fact: This claim is false There are no credible news reports stating that Altaf Hussain is hospitalised currently, and the image is from July 2025.
On 13 July 2026, X user ‘Saleem Speak’ posted an image of MQM founder Altaf Hussain hospitalised, claiming that the former leader was “breathing his last”. The image was accompanied by the following Urdu caption:
“کراچی میں صرف الطاف بھائی کہو تو پورا شہر پانچ منٹ میں بند ہو جاتا تھا لندن سے ٹی وی پر خطاب کرتا تھا تو لوگ کانپتے ہوئے اس کے ٹی وی والے خطاب کے سامنے ایسے بیٹھتے تھے جیسے قرآن سننے آئے ہوں ۔ بڑے بڑے سنئیر تجزیہ نگار ہوتے انکی مجال نہی تھی پاکستان میں الطاف حسین کے نام کوی منفی خبر دیں اے ار وای لاہور سٹوڈیو میں الطاف حسین کے بارے میں بات ہو رہی تھی ۔ پانچ منٹ بعد کراچی میں اے ار وی کا دفتر میں سب یرغمال بنے ہوے تھے پروگرام روکنا پڑ گیا تھا ۔ قربانی کی کھالوں پر صرف بھاؤ کے نام کا اسٹامپ لگا کر جاؤ تو پورا کراچی چھان مارو وہ کھال تم سے کوئی نہیں لے گا ۔ صاحب کراچی کو اپنی مرضی سے چلانے کے لیے لندن سے صرف ایک حکم جاری کرتا تھا ا۔ آج اپنی اخری سانسیں لیتا یہ شخص اسپتال میں اپنوں کا انتظار کر رہا رابطہ کمیٹی نے بھی یہ تصویر جاری کر کے عوام سے دعا کی اپیل کی ہے اج کسی کو یاد ہی نہیں کہ کراچی میں کوئی الطاف حسین بھی تھا ۔ یہ ہے دنیا کی حقیقت کسی نے ہمیشہ نہی رہنا ہمیشہ رہنے والی ذات میرے رب کی ہے۔بڑے بڑے ظالم اے سب کا انجام عبرت ناک ہوتا ہے ۔ اج بھی وہ مائیں حیات ہیں جنکے بیٹے اس کی بھینٹ چڑھ گئے اج بھی بوری بند لاشیوں کے لواحقین سوال پوچھ رہے ہیں اخر قصور کیا تا انکا ۔ اج بھی اس ماں کی چیخیں میڈیا پر موجود ہیں جو یہ کہتی رہی مارنا تھا تو میرے لعل کو اتنا بے دردی سے نہ مارتے چہرہ تو سلامت رکھتے میں چوم سکتی اسے دیکھ سکتی اسے شاید میرا دل کو سکون مل جاتا مگر ظالمو ہمیں اخری دیدار بھی کربناک حالت میں کرایا گیا ۔ میرے بیٹے کی شناخت مجھے اس کے ہاتھ پر بچپن کے جلے ہوے نشان سے کرنی پڑی ۔”
[Translation: “In Karachi, if you just mention Altaf Bhai, the entire city would shut down in five minutes. He would address the TV from London, and people would sit trembling in front of his TV address as if they had come to listen to the Quran.
Even the big senior analysts were not allowed to give any negative news about Altaf Hussain in Pakistan. ARI Lahore studio was talking about Altaf Hussain.
Five minutes later, everyone in the ARY office in Karachi was taken hostage and the program had to be stopped.
Just stamp the name of Bhai on the sacrificial skins and go and search the whole Karachi, no one will take that skin from you.
Sahib used to issue only one order from London to run Karachi according to his will.
Today, this person is taking his last breaths in the hospital. The Coordination Committee has also released this picture and appealed to the people for prayers. Today, no one remembers that there was an Altaf Hussain in Karachi.
This is the reality of the world, no one lives forever, the eternal being of my Lord. The end of all great tyrants is instructive. Even today, those mothers are alive whose sons fell victim to them.
Even today, the relatives of the sacked bodies are asking questions.
What was their fault?
Even today, the screams of this mother are present in the media, who kept saying, “If you had to kill me, don’t kill my beloved so cruelly. I could have kissed her face, I could have seen her. Perhaps my heart would have found peace, but the tyrants made us meet in a miserable state.”
I had to identify my son by the burn mark on his hand from childhood.*]
Screenshot from X post
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the image of the MQM leader in the hospital, which displayed reports from July 2025.
Soch Fact Check further investigated this claim by looking at MQM’s official website (archived here) and seeing if there were any such updates for the month of July 2026. There has been no mention of the MQM leader being ill or being in a critical condition recently, and the last health update on him was published on 2 February 2026 (archived here). It states that the MQM leader said he was administered an injection and an IV due to weakness, followed by another update (archived here) on 14 February 2026.
Moreover, Soch Fact Check reviewed the Convener of MQM’s Central Coordination Committee Mustafa Azizabadi’s X account. According to this account, the most recent update on Altaf Hussain’s health was from 20 February 2026, saying that he “had been under treatment at a hospital in northwest London for the past 19 days” and had been discharged from the hospital at the time. The X post included a video of Hussain waving at the camera, while on a wheelchair. It did not include any picture of him on a hospital bed.
Then we found that prior to the February 2026 update, Azizabadi had posted a video along with the update that Altaf Hussain was in the hospital on 13 July 2025. The thumbnail of this video, as seen below, is quite similar to the image being fact-checked. This suggested that the claim is misleading as this picture was likely from July 2025.
A side-by-side comparison of Altaf Hussain in the hospital: the thumbnail of the video shared by Mustafa Azizabadi in July 2025 (Right) and the image in the claim (left).
Soch Fact Check then reached out to Murtaza Ali Shah, a London based journalist, for further verification. He responded saying:
“Yes, this image is authentic as Altaf Hussain was hospitalised at the time. I was the one to actually publish it in the first place. This image is more than 9 months old.” Upon investigation, it was found that the image was posted to the journalist’s X account on 12 July 2025. A screenshot of the X post shows an image of Altaf Hussain on the left-hand-side, which is identical to the one being fact-checked.
X post by Murtaza Ali Shah from 12 July 2025, showing Altaf Hussain in the hospital at the time.
Therefore, Soch Fact Check concludes that the claim is false, and the accompanying image showing Altaf Hussain hospitalised is old.
Virality
One Facebook reel making the claim gained 811 views whereas the Facebook posts with the most interaction gained 670 likes and 482 reshares.
On X, the claim received the highest interaction at 43.2K views.
Soch Fact Check has previously debunked false claims that Altaf Hussain had died when this particular image last circulated in July 2025.
Conclusion: The image showing Altaf Hussain hospitalised is old. Moreover, there are no credible news reports stating that he is currently hospitalised or in critical condition.
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