Claim: Former Finance Minister Miftah Ismail stated that if the constitutional order and law in Pakistan was fair, Former Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan would be out of jail and all members of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) would be in jail.
Fact: Miftah Ismail did not make any claim of the sort and Urdu Point did not publish the statement. The image has been doctored to give the impression that these are Ismail’s words.
Fact or Fiction?
On 10 December, X (formerly Twitter) user “™دانش_گرد” posted an image of Miftah Ismail with a similar template as the one shared by the media outlet Urdu Point’s Facebook page. The image has a photograph of Ismail and the media outlet’s logo with the following words:
“اگر اس ملک میں آئین اور قانون میرٹ پر ہوتا تو آج عمران خان باہر اور پوری پی ڈی ایم جیل کے اندر ہوتی” [If the constitution and law in this country were based on merit, today Imran Khan would be out and the entire PDM would be in jail.]
The user appears to be a PTI supporter through their profile photo which contains a PTI flag. The user has 12.4k followers on X.
A Google reverse image search of the doctored image did not show any results of the claim being published by Urdu Point. A simple Google search of “Miftah Ismail Urdu Point” does not show any articles that claim the above. The most recent article by Urdu Point on Miftah Ismail appears to have been published on 27 September 2023 titled “Imran Khan Gained Remarkable Popularity, Says Miftah”, where Ismail discusses the political landscape in Pakistan and Imran Khan’s popularity surge. However, there is no mention of anyone who should or should not be behind bars.
Ismail himself replied to the tweet stating that it is “Another fake post created by some trolls.”
The claim is another among a series of wrongly attributed quotes to the former finance minister, the most recent being about the PDM mishandling IMF funds provided to Pakistan, which was also shared by renowned journalist Imran Riaz Khan.
Virality
The image shared by X user ™دانش_گرد gained 1.1k likes and 464 retweets. It was also shared on X here and here.
Prior to this, the quote itself had been posted as personal Facebook statuses, but it was after this tweet that the false attribution became viral.
The quote was posted by multiple accounts on Facebook as a status, attributing the words to Miftah Ismail. It was posted here, here, here, here, here, here. It was also shared as a YouTube short video, gaining 3,400 views.
Conclusion: Miftah Ismail did not make a statement about whether Imran Khan would be out of jail or any PDM members would go to jail if the Pakistani law and justice system were more fair and neither did the media outlet Urdu Point attribute these words to him. The image has been doctored.
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