Claim: A video of a grand birthday party that had gone viral on social media is from Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari’s son’s birthday.
Fact: The video is not from Zardari’s son’s birthday but from a birthday in Sialkot. It went viral on social media before the wrongly attributed claim as social media users shared it, commenting on the grandeur and extravagance of the event.
On 15 September 2022, photographer Irfan Ahson shared clips and images from a birthday party. The party was hosted by Zaina Arshad and her husband for their 1-year-old daughter. Zaina runs a joint Instagram blog called Real Life of Arshad Sisters on Instagram with her sister. She is also the CEO of Jasmine Events.
Fact or Fiction?
Irfan Ahson first shared the video clip on his Instagram account. Comments under the post criticised the extravagance of the event, especially in light of the recent floods in Pakistan. It also went viral on Twitter. It gained traction on a tweet captioned, “This is not a Shadi Event, it’s a Birthday party for a 1 YEAR OLD 😭😭😭 Pakistani Elites man 😭😭😭” receiving 14600 likes, 2,336 retweets and 1,232 quote tweets.
The video was later shared with the claim that it depicts Bakhtwar Bhutto Zardari’s son’s birthday. In 2021, Bakhtawar Bhutto announced the birth of her son Mir Hakim Mahmood on 10 October via Twitter. Hence, he has not turned one yet.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 7-day period from September 18 to 25 using the following search terms, “Bakhtawar Zardari birthday”. The search turned up 328 interactions across 9 posts. One of the captions read, “Bakhtawar zardari Son ki birthday awam ke payse se” [Bakhtawar Zardari’s son’s birthday from the public’s money]. Another post received 18,000 views. The false claim was also shared here, here, here, here, and here.
It has also been shared on Twitter here, here, here, and here. The video has also been posted on YouTube, and has been shared on Whatsapp with the false claim.
Conclusion: The viral video clip is not from Bakhtawar Bhutto’s son’s birthday but from a birthday in Sialkot. Bakhtawar Bhutto’s son has not turned one yet.