Claim: An image shows Australian journalist and Sky News anchor Yalda Hakim meeting PTI leader Sahibzada ‘Chico’ Jahangir ahead of her interview with former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s sister, Aleema Khanum, that was aired on Sky News.
Fact: The image is fake and confirmed to have been generated using Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Moreover, Jahangir said he has “never known or met” Hakim, while she termed the photo “fake” and “clearly fabricated”.
On 3 December 2025, multiple social media users shared a picture claiming that it shows Sky News presenter Yalda Hakim meeting Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Sahibzada Amir Jahangir. The posts in question allege that the two met ahead of an interview with the incarcerated party founder and former premier Imran Khan’s sister, Aleema Khanum (archived here, here, here, and here).
Also known as “Chico” Jahangir, the PTI leader is a “founding member” of the party and Khan’s spokesperson “in the UK & Europe”, according to his Facebook profile. Hakim, on the other hand, is an Afghan-born Australian journalist associated with Sky News as its lead world news presenter.
One post by X (formerly Twitter) account @EPropoganda1 — which claims to be “anti-mischief” — alleged that Hakim is an “anti-Pakistan” and “pro-India” journalist who “colluded” with Jahangir “to push an anti-Pakistan agenda and used Imran Khan’s sister to bash the army”.
Another post terms Hakim as an “Afghando” — a portmanteau combining the words “Afghan” with an abusive term in colloquial Urdu — “who has been in relationship” with Jaiveer Shergill, the spokesperson of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It also asserted that the interview with Khanum contained “pre-planned questions” and was “paid” for by the PTI.
A third post alleged that Jahangir “had lunch” with the Sky News journalist in London and “not only finalised the entire arrangement but also took out £200,000 from his personal pocket and put it on the table in cash”. It also made multiple other accusations, including that the interview with Khan’s sister was an “organised charge sheet that is being prepared against Pakistan under the common agenda of Goldsmith and Hindutva”.
The same post also claimed that “the Jalandhari group of Operation Goldsmith has been fully activated”, quoting some “reliable sources” as saying that “after the massive rigging and failure on Godi Media, Aleema Khan is now going to give an interview to Sky News”.
Khan’s sister, it alleged, chose “staunch anti-Pakistan anchors like Arnab Goswami and Gaurav Sawant on Godi Media”.
Separately, one X user went as far as to claim (archive) in a 2 December 2025 post that they “saw Yalda [Hakim] with Chikoo Jahangir in London 5 days ago & took this picture”.
‘Operation Goldsmith,’ ‘Godi Media’
“Jalandhari group” is likely a reference to the Indian city of Jalandhar and indicates alleged collusion between India, Afghanistan, and the Goldsmith family.
“Hindutva” refers to right-wing Hindu nationalist political ideology that promotes ideas of Hindu supremacy in India; at present, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “it is most closely associated” with the BJP and the “nonpolitical Hindu nationalist paramilitary organisation” Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
“Operation Goldsmith” is a term used by some — and even Defence Minister Khawaja Asif (archive) — to describe alleged external interference and political manoeuvres aimed at influencing Pakistan’s internal affairs, particularly regarding Khan, whose image and standing it reportedly aims to restore.
It apparently stems from the Goldsmith family, who are Khan’s former in-laws, including film producer Jemima Goldsmith, his ex-wife, and her brother, the British politician Zac Goldsmith.
The former UK minister, as well as American diplomat Richard Grenell, both strongly criticised Asif’s use of the term as “awful and VERY Jewish” and “crazy talk”.
On the other hand, the term “Godi Media” — coined by Indian journalist Ravish Kumar — means “lapdog” news outlets that “operate as extensions of the ruling party”, the BJP, or support it blindly.
Interviews of Imran Khan’s sisters
In November 2025, Aleema Khanum and another one of Imran Khan’s three sisters, Noreen Niazi, gave separate interviews to Indian media outlets — including Republic World, CNN-News18, ANI News, and India Today — citing repeated denials to meet their brother in the Central Jail Rawalpindi, commonly known as the Adiala Jail.
According to these outlets, the sisters spoke about an alleged “political turmoil in Pakistan” and discussed Khan’s health in prison, claiming that he was being held in a “death cell” and hinting at a “big protest” in the future. They also claimed that their brother was “held incommunicado for over four weeks” and said it is the “darkest time” in the country’s history, the reports added.
In December 2025, Khanum also gave interviews to British outlet Sky News and Australian channel ABC News, with journalists Yalda Hakim and Girish Sawlani as the hosts, respectively.
Soon after this interview, some social media users falsely claimed that the Sky News journalist had asked Khanum about the four-day war between India and Pakistan and the latter allegedly responded by calling Defence Forces Chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir a “very radicalised Islamist” who “yearns for war” and saying her brother was “a pure liberal”. Soch Fact Check debunked the viral video.
Info minister criticises Khan family
On 30 November, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar publicly assailed Khan’s sisters for “defaming” Pakistan by speaking to Indian media outlets, saying they “should be ashamed”.
“Why are these sisters crying about their brother on Indian and Afghan channels,” Tarar asked.
The reason Indian channels were providing their platforms to Khan’s sisters was because “they know that the mentality of this family and this party [the PTI] is anti-Pakistan”, he said.
The minister also accused the PTI leaders and Khan’s sisters of engaging in “false propaganda”, saying, “For you, politics is more important, maligning Pakistan is more important, and [your] personal agenda is more important.”
In her response, Noreen Niazi criticised the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in a 30 November 2025 X post, saying, “My only purpose in speaking publicly is to expose the injustice of my brother’s imprisonment and to urge the human rights organisations and judiciary to recognise the systematic denial of his legal, political, and humanitarian rights.”
Khan’s sisters and the PTI leaders have repeatedly been denied a chance to meet him in jail, triggering protests and sit-ins where, according to the party, police “violently detained” the three of them and “picked up” other leaders.
False death claims
During the time the PTI leaders and Khan’s sisters were not allowed to meet him, rumours — and a fake image — circulated about the party founder’s death, only to be debunked later by Soch Fact Check.
On 2 December 2025, Khan’s third sister, Dr Uzma Khan, was finally allowed a visit to Adiala Jail, whereafter she said the PTI founder was “physically well” but “very angry” and had “no contact with anybody”, as authorities were “subjecting him to mental torture”.
The next day, she alleged in an interview with Independent Urdu that authorities were conducting a “test run” by spreading claims of Khan’s death “to see what people’s reaction would be”. She said, “If there is no reaction from the public, or if the reaction is manageable, then they might really do something to him.”
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the purported photograph but did not find any reliable source for it, apart from the social media posts that rehashed the claim.
We then ran it in deepfake detectors such as Hive Moderation, Zhuque AI Detection Assistant, and DeepFake-O-Meter.
According to Hive Moderation, the picture was “likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content” with a probability of 99.9%. However, Zhuque AI Detection Assistant said it was “not likely to be AI-generated” with a score of 21.11%.
On the other hand, we chose seven of the available detectors in DeepFake-O-Meter, including AIDE, CLIP-ViT, Effort, GLFF, HIFI, NoDown, and NPR. Their respective results were 18.5%, 0.0%, 62.6%, 97.8%, 0.0%, 0.5%, and 1.6%.
Given the inconclusive, diverse results, we decided to verify the picture’s origin by running it through Google Reverse Image Search and checking the “About this image” tab. The results confirmed that it was created using Google AI, citing the detection of a SynthID watermark.
We then tested the photo using Google’s SynthID Detector, which is a “verification portal to quickly and efficiently identify AI-generated content made with Google AI”.
It works by identifying the SynthID, “a state-of-the-art tool that embeds imperceptible watermarks” in AI-generated content even when it “is shared or undergoes a range of transformations”. According to Google, it covers “text, audio and video content, including content generated by our Gemini, Imagen, Lyria and Veo models”.
When asked to test the image, SynthID Detector — which currently works in Gemini in Pakistan — said “most of this image was edited or generated with Google AI”. However, while it does not identify which of the platform’s models were used, all of them have the same type of imperceptible watermark.
To corroborate our findings, we created an ultrarealistic image of Hakim secretly meeting Khan in a prison cell in Rawalpindi. Then we tested that in Google Reverse Image Search and SynthID Detector, both of which confirmed that it was generated by AI.
To further confirm our findings, we used an authentic photo of Hakim from an event in 2012 in Google Reverse Image Search and SynthID Detector. According to the results, the picture is “at least 10 years old” and “was not made with Google’s AI” as it “appears to be a standard digital photograph”.
A guide showing how we tested the image for SynthID in Gemini is provided below:
Reactions of Hakim, Jahangir
Moreover, Hakim wrote on X that it was “disturbing to see fake images being spread and falsely presented as me”. These were “clearly fabricated”, she added white quoting a post by London-based lawyer Ayesha Ijaz Khan, who wrote, “It’s curious how @SkyYaldaHakim gets caught on camera with political actors from India (BJP) or Pakistan (PTI) before every controversial interview. Interesting journalistic practice. @SkyNews needs to investigate.”
Jahangir also termed the viral photo “fake” on X, saying, “I do not know this lady nor have I ever met her. It is a work of AI.” It included a link to his Facebook post, where he uploaded a screenshot of a claim by Capital TV Washington anchor Asim Siddiqui — who had shared the same photo that we are investigating — and warned him of legal action “for attacking my character”.
Meanwhile, though it is true that Hakim and Shergill, the BJP spokesperson, have been friends and he has appeared on her show in the past, the claims around their romantic relationship appear to be unsubstantiated rumours.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the claim is false.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that the claim appeared here, here, here, and here on X, here, here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook, and here, here, here, here, here, and here on Instagram.
Conclusion: The image is fake and confirmed to have been generated using Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Moreover, Jahangir said he has “never known or met” Hakim, while she has said the photo is “fake” and “clearly fabricated”.
Background image in cover photo: @JahangirSahibzada and @yaldahakim
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