Claim: A viral image shows Imran Khan at Shifa International Hospital in August 2026.
Fact: The image is taken from an AI-generated video and does not show Khan at Shifa International Hospital. The video has been circulating since 21 July, before the Supreme Court ordered Khan’s transfer to a hospital.
A Facebook post by Habibullah Khan Awan on 19 August 2026 showed former Prime Minister Imran Khan sitting in a wheelchair, dressed in a blue hospital gown and with severe bruising around one eye.
The Urdu caption states: “عمران خان کی الشفاء انٹرنیشنل ہسپتال سے تازہ ترین تصویر!“
[Translation: Latest picture of Imran Khan from Shifa International Hospital.]
It also asked users to comment on how Khan’s health and condition appeared in the image.
The post presented the image as a recent visual of Khan at Shifa International Hospital.
Facebook/Habibullah Khan Awan
The claim circulated amid renewed attention on Khan’s health and medical treatment in custody, after the Supreme Court ordered authorities to transfer him to Shifa International Hospital for examination by a medical board
Khan’s medical treatment
In January 2026, Khan was taken from Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad, where he underwent a 20-minute procedure for an eye condition after specialists recommended further assessment and treatment. Concerns about his eyesight continued in the following months, while his lawyers and family sought greater access to specialist doctors and his personal physician.
On 18 August 2026, the Supreme Court directed authorities to transfer Khan to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad within two days for examination and treatment by a medical board. The board was to include a physician, general surgeon, specialist in internal medicine, eye specialist, and cardiologist. The court also permitted Khan’s personal physician, Dr Faisal Sultan, and his sister Dr Uzma Khan to remain associated with his examination and treatment.
An excerpt from the Supreme Court’s 18 August 2026 order directing authorities to transfer Imran Khan to Shifa International Hospital within two days. Screenshot: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf/X
The federal government filed a review petition on 19 August, seeking the recall of the order and arguing that transferring a prisoner to a private hospital conflicted with the existing legal framework. During the night of 20 and 21 August, authorities took Khan to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), rather than Shifa International Hospital, and returned him to Adiala Jail at around 5 am. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Khan was taken to PIMS because of security concerns along the planned route to Shifa and that doctors had declared him medically fit. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) said the change of hospital and lack of access to his personal physician violated the Supreme Court’s directions.
At a press conference on 21 August, Khan’s sister Dr Uzma Khan said he appeared physically fit and that his blood pressure was normal, but that he had complained about his treatment in custody. She quoted him as saying he had been subjected to “cruelty” and said he had complained about prolonged solitary confinement and lack of human contact. Dr Faisal Sultan said he had been taken separately to Shifa International Hospital, where he waited for around two and a half hours before being told Khan was unlikely to arrive. PTI said it would file a contempt petition over what it described as non-compliance with the Supreme Court’s order. Reuters reported that there was no immediate response from the interior and law ministries or jail authorities to its request for comment on Khan’s torture allegation.
Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023. His family and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf have repeatedly raised concerns about his health and access to doctors, while government officials have maintained that he is receiving medical care in accordance with prison rules. The dispute over his treatment and possible transfer from Adiala Jail received significant coverage.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check conducted reverse image searches to trace the image’s circulation. Using Google Lens, we found that the image shared in the post from 19 August was taken from a video that had circulated earlier. The earliest copy of the video located by Soch Fact Check was posted to Facebook by Farman Ullah Kakar on 21 July 2026.
The video shows the same scene as the image shared in August, including Khan’s appearance, with a blue hospital gown, wheelchair, bruising around his eye, and the hospital background.
An excerpt from the Supreme Court’s 18 August 2026 order directing authorities to transfer Imran Khan to Shifa International Hospital within two days. Screenshot: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf/X
The original video was, therefore, circulating almost a month before the Supreme Court directed authorities on 18 August to transfer Khan to Shifa International Hospital. This contradicts the 19 August Facebook post that presented the image as a recent photo of Khan at Shifa. Moreover, Khan was ultimately not taken to Shifa International Hospital. During the night of 20 and 21 August, authorities instead took him to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) before returning him to Adiala Jail.
The date of the video confirms that the image is unrelated to the events surrounding Khan’s planned transfer to Shifa in August. However, earlier circulation alone does not establish that the underlying video is AI-generated. Soch Fact Check, therefore, examined individual frames and movement across consecutive frames for signs of synthetic manipulation.
Visual inconsistencies
Frame-by-frame examination revealed visual inconsistencies associated with synthetic image-to-video generation. The clearest defect appears between approximately 8.0 and 8.5 seconds. As the hand moves over the wheelchair armrest, the apparent width and spacing of the fingers shift across closely spaced frames. The boundary between the fingertips and the black wheelchair armrest also appears unstable, with parts of the hardware seeming to intersect with the hand as it moves.
The changes are visible across multiple closely spaced frames rather than a single blurred image. Other, less pronounced inconsistencies are visible around Khan’s face and wristband. Between approximately 4.2 and 6.3 seconds, the contours around the bruised eye appear to soften and shift as his face changes direction, while the boundary between his jaw and beard also changes. The markings on the hospital wristband lose definition and appear to reform at different points in the clip. The skin, beard, clothing, and forearms also appear smooth in parts of the video, while smaller details change as the subject moves.
The repeated changes across the frames prompted Soch Fact Check to analyse the video using AI-detection tools. While compression can reduce detail or introduce blockiness, the changes observed here involve the shape and boundaries of visual elements across multiple frames.
AI analysis
Soch Fact Check analysed the complete video using Hive Moderation’s AI-generated content detection tool. Hive returned an overall score of 41.1% for AI-generated video. However, its frame-level analysis flagged the frame at six seconds as 82.4% likely to be AI-generated. The tool’s timeline also highlighted suspicious portions between approximately six and seven seconds and again near the end of the clip. Hive returned 0.1% for deepfake content and 0% for AI-generated speech. The deepfake and speech scores measure different forms of synthetic media and do not, on their own, rule out image-to-video generation.
Hive Moderation gave the video an overall AI-generated score of 41.1%, while the frame at six seconds was flagged at 82.4%. Screenshot: Hive Moderation
Soch Fact Check also analysed the clip using FauxLens, which returned the verdict “Likely AI-generated” with a confidence score of 85%. FauxLens’s metadata layer issued a warning, stating that the file contained only partial capture metadata relating to stereo audio, which was insufficient to determine its origin. Its visual-inspection layer was separately flagged. According to FauxLens’s documentation, its confidence score indicates how strongly the available evidence supports its verdict. It should not be interpreted as a calibrated probability that the video is fake.
FauxLens returned a “Likely AI-generated” verdict for the video with an 85% confidence score. Screenshot: FauxLens
The tools produced different results. Hive’s strongest finding was on an individual frame, while FauxLens returned an overall “Likely AI-generated” verdict with 85% confidence. AI-detection tools are not conclusive when used alone. Their performance can vary depending on the generator, video compression, and whether a detection model was trained on the technology used to produce the media.
In this case, however, the detector findings are supported by visible temporal defects across consecutive frames. The chronology separately establishes that the clip cannot show Khan at Shifa International Hospital in August. Soch Fact Check could not determine which generative model produced the video. Visual artefacts alone cannot establish whether it was created using Kling, Runway, Luma, Veo, or another image-to-video system.
Virality
The footage was circulated across Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, and TikTok in July and August 2026.
Soch Fact Check identified at least 28 posts sharing the video or stills taken from it. As of 6:27 pm on 24 August 2026, the 17 Facebook posts had collectively received approximately 13,800 reactions, 752 comments, 3,533 shares, and 819,800 views. Across all posts for which engagement figures were visible, the footage had accumulated approximately 27,200 likes or reactions, 1,720 comments or replies, 4,126 shares or reposts, and 984,000 views.
Conclusion: The viral image does not show Imran Khan at Shifa International Hospital. It was taken from an AI-generated video that was circulating before the Supreme Court ordered Khan’s transfer there. Frame-by-frame analysis and two AI-detection tools identified signs of synthetic generation in the underlying footage. Notably, Khan was not taken to Shifa in August, despite a Supreme Court order; he was briefly taken to PIMS instead.
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