Claim: A Facebook page posted a video with the claim that it showed a mother grieving after her infant daughter was killed by her father in Mianwali in a case that has sparked national outrage.
Fact: The claim is false and misleading. The video, in fact, shows a woman crying after allegedly being harassed while being held on remand at a police station in Karachi. The woman is not the mother of the infant girl who was killed by her father in Mianwali earlier this month.
On 9 March 2022, Facebook page City Ak47 posted a video with an Urdu caption that translated into English reads as, “The girl’s mother made everyone cry.”
بچی کی ماں نے سب کو رولا دیا.
On 7 March 2022, Shahzaib Khan shot and killed his seven-day-old daughter because he wanted a son. The incident has caused national outrage, with many reacting with anger on social media. The news was also covered by national and international media outlets.
Soch Fact Check received the link to the Facebook video, has been flagged by a number of users on Facebook since it was posted on 9 March 2022. The 1:26 minute long video includes a clip of the page admin talking about the Mianwali incident which is misleading. The woman featured in the video is not the mother of the victim but a different woman who is being held at Liaquatabad police station in Karachi.
Fact or Fiction?
In the video in question, the admin of Facebook page CityAk47 refer to a video of a woman crying when discussing the Mianwali incident. The admin claim that the woman in the video is the mother of the girl who was shot dead by her own father. In part of the video, the audio of the woman is muted as the page admin explains that she is grieving for her daughter. He further claims that the woman is saying her husband should be arrested by the local police and justice should be done. In the end, he asks viewers to share the video as much as they can so it can reach Prime Minister Imran Khan or Chief Minister Usman Buzdar.
Soch Fact Check found the video to be misleading. The woman in the video cannot be heard as the audio of her clip is muted but a few comments on the video suggested the woman is not in fact the mother of the infant girl.
After investigation, Soch Fact Check found that the woman in the video is in fact, Iaaren Jannat, who is being held on remand at the Liaquatabad women’s police station in Karachi. Jannat was found guilty of murdering her husband. While being held on remand, Jannat reported that she was harassed by the investigating officer (the SHO). In the original video, she can be heard describing the incident of harassment.
Geo News reported on the accusation levelled by Jannat against the investigating officer. The news was also shared by a local media reporter on Facebook.
Virality
The video posted by City Ak47 received 241,000 likes, 4,3000 comments and 2,600,000 million views between 9 March to 25 March on Facebook.
A CrowdTangle analysis of the video’s Urdu caption (“بچی کی ماں نے سب کو رولا دیا”) showed that the video in question garnered a total of 290,820 interactions between 23 February and 25 March 2022.
Conclusion: The video shared by CityAk47 is false and misleading. The page admin claimed that a particular clip included in the video showed a mother crying after her infant daughter was shot dead by her father in Mianwali. However, the video does not show the mother of the girl but rather a woman being held on remand in Karachi after being accused of murdering her husband. The claim that the video shows the mother in the Mianwali incident crying is false.