Claim: An image shows a group of children arrested for making a video against CM Punjab Maryam Nawaz.
Fact: The image is AI-generated.
On 7 August 2026, a Facebook account named میرا وطن shared a video of a group of boys addressing Chief Minister of Punjab Maryam Nawaz.
In the 17 second-long video, one of the children says in Seraiki, “Maryam Nawaz, listen to me carefully. Our village hasn’t had any electricity for five days now. The power comes back for just an hour at night. If we don’t get it [power] back tomorrow, we’ll shut down the entire Rahim Yar Khan.”
The video also features two images of the same boys in the backdrop of the video:
Image 1: It shows them standing outside a police station with two officers.
Image 2: It shows them holding their hands together as if they were asking for forgiveness.
The two images featured with the video claiming these children were arrested for making a video against CM Punjab Maryam Nawaz.
The caption of the post reads:
دھی رانی بچوں سے ڈر گئی 🔥🔥
پنجاب میں فسطائیت عروج پر، رحیم یار خان میں بچوں نے مسلسل لوڈشیڈنگ کی وجہ سے اپنا احتجاج ویڈیو کی صورتحال میں ریکارڈ کروایا، اور ویڈیو ٹک ٹاک پر لگا دی پھر ہوا کچھ یوں کہ میڈم صاحبہ کی شان میں گستاخی ہوگئی، اور بچوں کو گرفتار کرلیا گیا۔
[Translation: “The ‘Princess’ got spooked by children 🔥🔥
Fascism is at its peak in Punjab; in Rahim Yar Khan, children recorded a video protest against continuous load-shedding and posted it on TikTok. What followed was that an act deemed disrespectful to ‘Her Ladyship’ occurred, and the children were arrested.”]
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check first searched for any credible publications reporting on the police arresting a group of children for making a video against Nawaz but couldn’t find any. A reverse image-search of the video’s keyframes also did not yield any credible results and led to other social media posts regurgitating the claim.
Then, a keyword search of “ رحیم یار خان بند” was conducted on Facebook and TikTok to trace the original source of the clip. While the search led to several other links making the same claim on Facebook, the keyword search on TikTok led to the original clip, posted by an account named Rpk King on 30 July 2026. The user’s profile picture featured two of the children seen in the video under investigation, indicating that the profile belonged to them.
Left: The profile picture of Rpk King, Right: Same two children in the video under investigation.
Soch Fact Check observed that the account had frequently posted more videos after their clip against CM Punjab Maryam Nawaz on 30 July, which suggested that the children have not been arrested. Moreover, in the comments section of the original video, a user named Malik Aqeel had posted one of the images in the video being fact-checked with the caption “updated” on 1 August 2026.
Another TikTok account shared a similar claim of the children being arrested by the police for making a video against Nawaz. Khan commented on the video saying:
“o bahi yea Ai h MN NY he yea picture comments ki thi.”
[Translation: “This is AI, I shared this picture in the comments.”]
Left: Aqeel commented on the picture on the original video, Right: Aqeel points out on a separate video that he created this AI image.
Aqeel told Soch Fact Check that the image is AI which led us to look for visual discrepancies.
Visual discrepancies
Soch Fact Check looked for signs of AI in the images, and noticed physical anomalies like the uniforms of the police officers and the signages in the background of the images.
- The police officers are wearing different uniforms in both the images. Image 1 shows officers wearing a black uniform while Image 2 shows them wearing an olive green uniform.
- The signages in the back seem like gibberish and warped text rather than actual Urdu. Moreover, the main sign in Image 1 reads “پولیس تانہ” (police tana) whereas in proper Urdu, “thana” is written as تھانہ.
Police officers wearing different uniforms in both the images.
Gibberish and incorrect spellings on the signage in the background.
For further verification, Soch Fact Check then ran both the images through a tool designed by OpenAI to check if it was created using the American artificial intelligence company’s tools. It confirmed that the pictures had been “generated using OpenAI tools,” as it “found a SynthID watermark that originated from OpenAI.”
Results from OpenAI’s tool.
The TikTok user’s comment, visual discrepancies, and the SynthID watermark identified by OpenAI confirms that the images of the children under arrest are AI-generated.
Virality
Soch Fact Check first came across a viral Facebook post with as many as 853 likes and 18,000 views. It garnered higher reach on the same platform where it received 10,000 likes and 1,000 likes via separate posts.
Conclusion: The images of a group of children arrested by the police for making a video against CM Punjab Maryam Nawaz are AI-generated.
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com