Claim: A screenshot circulating online shows that Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar has confirmed the death of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and offered his condolences via a tweet.
Fact: The screenshot shows a tweet by a fake account on X called @anwaar_kakkar. Kakar’s official account on the platform is @anwaar_kakar.
Fact or Fiction:
On 18 December 2023, X (formerly Twitter) user Dr Syed Rizwan Ahmed (@Dr_RizwanAhmed) shared a screenshot of Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister, Anwaarul Haq Kakar claiming that the premier has confirmed the death of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, via a tweet.
Ahmed’s tweet states:
“The Messiah of humanity, dear to every Pakistani heart, our beloved His Excellency Dawood Ibrahim passed away due to poisoned by unknown. He breathed his last in a hospital of Karachi. May Allah grant him the highest position in Jannat. Inna Lillahi wa inna ilayhi raj’un.
#DawoodIbrahim”
Social media was abuzz with reports of Dawood Ibrahim’s alleged death in Karachi, suggesting that the underworld don had been rushed to the hospital due to poisoning. Pakistan has repeatedly denied his presence in the country.
Soch Fact Check found the claim to be false. The caretaker prime minister’s official account on X is @anwaar_kakar, not @anwaar_kakkar. His real account has 138,500 followers and a grey check mark indicating that the account represents a government/multilateral organisation or a government/multilateral official.
X applies visual identity signals like labels and checkmarks on account profiles to provide more context about — and help distinguish — different types of accounts.
We manually searched Kakar’s account to find the tweet being attributed to him, but no such post was available. We also conducted an advanced X search using the term “Dawood Ibrahim”, limiting searches to tweets from Kakar’s account. The search showed that Kakar did not post any tweets about the underworld don.
Kakar’s last few tweets between 16 to 19 December are about the loss of lives in the Gansu province earthquake in China, the 75th anniversary of Pakistan-Norway diplomatic relations, and the passing of Kuwait’s Emir, Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.
Hence, we conclude that the viral screenshot is false. It’s pertinent to note that this fact-check is not investigating the news of Dawood Ibrahim’s death.
Virality:
The claim can be found here, here, here, here and here on X.
The tweet by @Dr_RizwanAhmed gained significant traction with 1.1 million views, 11,00 likes and 2,600 reposts.
The claim was shared here on Facebook.
Conclusion: The screenshot is false as the caretaker Prime Minister Kakar, did not tweet about the death of Dawood Ibrahim.
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