Claim: Viral videos show incarcerated former PM Imran Khan giving a speech from Adiala Jail ahead of the 27 September 2026 protest calling for his release.
Fact: The clip in question is AI-generated, and there has been no public address from the former PM from Adiala Jail.
The video was posted on X, and shared by multiple social media users. In the video, Imran Khan is speaking in Urdu that is translated as below :
[Translation: “My Pakistanio, remember, cowards and brave people die only once, but brave people don’t die dishonourably. I have raised the slogan of righteousness, and for that, I am ready to face any kind of situation. The upcoming date of 27 September is the most important date of your history. And this is your last chance. Now, you have to make a decision whether you want to die like a slave everyday or come out of your homes on 27 September like brave people. Your expectant, your captain.”]
The X post was shared with the following caption in Urdu:
27 ستمبر فیصلہ کُن دن!! یا تو غلاموں کی طرح روز مرتے رہیں۔۔۔ یا بہادروں کیطرح اپنے گھروں نکل کر چھین لیں آزادی!
[Translation:”27 September Decision-Making Day!! Either keep dying daily like slaves… Or step out of your homes like brave warriors and seize your freedom!”]
Screenshot from one viral X post.
Measures taken ahead of PTI protest
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) announced a nationwide protest, including a march towards Islamabad on 27 September 2026, to demand the release of party founder and former Prime Minister Imran Khan and, according to the party, mobilise supporters for the “supremacy of the Constitution”. PTI described the planned demonstration as peaceful, while federal and provincial authorities began making security and law-and-order preparations several weeks before the protest.
The preparations extended beyond roadblocks. Islamabad police’s anti-riot unit was instructed to audit its equipment and seek additional supplies, including long- and short-range tear gas shells and tear gas guns.
The Islamabad High Court also issued directions concerning the planned protest. In an order announced on 14 September and detailed later that week, the court held that political parties and their leadership could not occupy roads, highways, interchanges, toll plazas, or public buildings in a way that obstructed citizens’ movement, business activity, or access to hospitals and educational institutions. The court also directed provincial governments not to use public funds, officials, vehicles, machinery, or other government resources to facilitate the march, according to Dawn’s report on the ruling.
Imran Khan’s family, supporters detained
Authorities also made arrests ahead of 27 September. On 20 September, the Lahore deputy commissioner ordered the detention of Imran Khan’s sister Aleema Khan for 30 days under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance. Police sources told Dawn that she was taken to Kot Lakhpat Jail.
The following day, Khan’s other sisters, Dr Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi, were also detained under the same law. PTI and Imran’s son Kasim Khan both alleged that several other family members had also been taken into custody. Kasim wrote on X that Uzma, Noreen, and his cousins Shershah and Shahrez had been taken away “with no explanation”.
Amnesty International said on 21 September that the targeting of Khan’s family and PTI activists was a “flagrant violation of their rights to liberty, freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly”, and called for the immediate release of Khan’s relatives and PTI workers. Amnesty also noted that the arrests came ahead of the planned 27 September protests and warned that “a protest cannot be deemed violent before it has even started.”
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check verified if any official statement had been posted by the former PM in regards to the 27 September 2026 protest by looking into the PTI’s official X account. Between September 22 (when the post was shared) and September 25, no official appearance or statement from Imran Khan regarding the march could be found.
On 20 September 2026, Noreen and Aleema Khan were detained by the Lahore DC Office, which ordered their detention under the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960 ahead of the protests. Hence, there is no official representative attending the designated meetings with Khan at Adiala Jail on Tuesdays and Thursdays, although other family members and cousins are appointed as designated representatives, they were blocked on 22 September 2026 from meeting him.
This suggests that the video is false, as any official message about the protest would have been shared by Khan’s family or official PTI channels.
AI Detection Tools
The video was tested through multiple deepfake detection tools, such as Hive Detect and Hive Moderation.
According to Hive Detect’s results, the sample is 99.9% likely to be AI-generated video and 98.7% for AI-generated speech, but the chances of it being a deepfake was 0%. This result was obtained throughout the video, indicating that AI was used for the prison background, the framing of the video that includes the time, cell number and location of Adiala Jail. It also suggests that Imran Khan as he appears in the video is fully AI-generated, including his clothing, face and speech.
Results obtained from Hive Detect.
The second AI detection tool that was used is Hive Moderation, an AI detection scanner which involves multiple tools like visual, audio and text moderation. It checks if an image or text was created by AI.
We ran the image through Hive Moderation’s AI-Generated Content Detection tool, used specifically for photos. Specific timeframes from the video were tested, the first being 0:22 seconds where the overall result was 99.4% for the likelihood of AI-generation. Within the breakdown of “Generation Sources”, we see that it was 99.5% likely generated using Seedance2.5, an AI generator for 30 second narrative videos. Hence, results from Hive Moderation also suggest that this video is AI-generated.
Result from Hive Moderation.
The overall result for the next time stamp, 0:41 seconds, was scanned and gave 99.9% for the likelihood of AI-generation. Within the breakdown of “Generation Sources”, we see that it was 99.0% likely generated using Seedance2.5.
Result from Hive Moderation.
Audio Analysis
Soch Fact Check reached out to Shaur Azher, a lecturer who teaches sound design and sound recording at the University of Karachi and the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST). He also works as an audio engineer at our sister organisation, Soch Videos, and specialises in mixing and mastering audio.
The audio being fact-checked was analysed as a stand alone audio, due to not having any other audio of Imran Khan from Adiala Jail to compare it to. His analysis was as follows:
- Noise Floor / Room Tone (Strongest technical indicator)
- Quiet sections are almost pure low frequency energy (~98% below 500 Hz).
- Extremely little natural mid or high-frequency ambient texture.
- Spectral flatness of the noise floor is low and the residual is stationary.
- Natural room recordings almost always contain a more mixed mid frequency “air” and irregular micro noise. This profile matches the simple low-rumble noise beds commonly added by neural TTS / voice-conversion systems.
- High-Frequency Content & Mouth / Breath Detail
- Energy above 3–4 kHz is very low (band RMS 3–8 kHz only ~0.010).
- High-pass residual (>4 kHz) in low-amplitude regions is minimal.
- Natural speech contains irregular lip smacks, tongue noise, breath bursts and aspiration. These are under-represented and lack the usual irregularity.
- Spectral Envelope & Smoothness – related to frequency,
- Strong concentration in the 250–500 Hz low-mid band (~50%).
- Mid-band log-spectrum variance is moderate but the overall envelope is stable across time.
- Higher order MFCC coefficients show relatively constrained variation.
- Formant transitions appear cleaner than typical unscripted natural speech.
- Temporal & Envelope Characteristics
- Short-lag envelope autocorrelation remains very high (0.99 → 0.94 over the first ~10 mssteps), indicating an unusually smooth amplitude contour.
- Decay time ~161 ms (mild, dry).
- Crest factor 8.0 (controlled, not heavily compressed, but also not the wide natural dynamics of an emotional live recording).
- Frame to frame spectral variance is extremely low.
- Pitch & Prosody
- Rough F0 mean ~182 Hz with CV ≈ 0.47 (not completely flat).
- However, the overall delivery has the steady, evenly paced character frequently produced by current voice-cloning models rather than the micro-variations of spontaneous emotional speech.
In conclusion, the technical analysis contains multiple red flags typical of AI generated or voice converted speech, especially the unnatural noise floor and lack of natural micro detail. When these are placed next to the known restrictions on the speaker, the recording cannot reasonably be accepted as authentic.
Virality
The video of Imran Khan’s message to the public about the protest was found on Facebook and X. It received 75.1K views on X.
The reel on Facebook obtained around 36K views and 3.2K likes.
Conclusion: The video of Imran Khan’s message about the 27 September 2026 protest is AI-generated. No official statement from the former PM has been shared on PTI’s channels or by any of his family members, many of whom are detained and unable to pass along any potential messages from him.
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com