Claim: Zartaj Gul tweeted a photo of Imran Khan sitting next to a woman with the caption, “he was a strange king; he used to seat the poor in the front at a gathering of kings.”
Fact: The image was doctored to make it appear as if Khan was sitting closer to the woman than he actually was. The original photo shows that the woman was sitting farther away from him.
On 11 February 2023, former Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) minister of state for climate change, Zartaj Gul Wazir, posted a tweet that claimed an image of Imran Khan sitting next to a poor woman was evidence of his commitment to treating all people equally. The caption read, “He was a strange king who invited both poor and rich to sit with him.”
Fact or Fiction?
Upon closer inspection, it became clear that the image was doctored. Near the bottom of the photo, the image is heavily smudged.
Soch Fact Check found that the image had been tampered with using Photoshop and other techniques to make it appear as though Khan was closer to the woman than he actually was.
We were able to use reverse image search to locate the original, unaltered photo. This image was taken at a launch event for Khan’s Kafaalat program, a government initiative aimed at providing financial assistance to women living below the poverty line.
In the original photo, Khan is seated at a distance from the woman, and there is another person visible in between them who was blurred out in the doctored image.
Newschecker.in also fact-checked this image on 16 February 2023 after it went viral on social media, with the claim that this woman pictured was attending an Indian wedding and her image was doctored and shared by PTI’s social media team.
Virality
Zartaj Gul Wazir’s tweet was shared with 3,614,410 followers and gathered over 33,785 interactions and 543,200 views on Twitter.
On Facebook we found several posts sharing the same caption and image. Some of them can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The image shared by Gul was doctored.