Claim: A photograph circulating online allegedly shows Imran Khan, his wife Bushra Khan, and a man labeled as Mrs. Khan’s ex-husband Khawar Maneka, performing Umrah at the Masjid al-Haram, the mosque that surrounds the Kaaba in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, at the state’s expense.
Fact: The man in the photograph walking next to Imran Khan is not Khawar Maneka but rather Shehryar Akbar Khan, a Pakistani diplomat who previously served as Consul General in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and later as Ambassador to Serbia. Khawar Maneka did not perform Umrah with the Khans and correspondingly the claim that his Umrah expenses were borne by the state treasury is false as well.
Fact or Fiction?
On 28 April 2022, Facebook User Shaki Pakis posted a photo to his page with the claim that it showed former Prime Minister Imran Khan performing Umrah with his wife Bushra Khan and Mrs. Khan’s ex-husband Khawar Maneka.
The photograph’s Urdu caption roughly translates as, “the time has now come that a woman [Bushra Khan] is performing Umrah with two husbands, and that too at the state’s expense.”
The man in the photograph walking next to Imran Khan is not Khawar Maneka, but rather Shehryar Akbar Khan, a Pakistani diplomat who previously served as Consul General in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and later as Ambassador to Serbia.
Additionally, although Imran and Bushra Khan have performed Umrah together on several occasions, this particular photograph seems to date back to September 2019 when Imran Khan was in Saudi Arabia for a two-day visit.
Shehryar Akbar Khan has been misidentified as Khawar Maneka on several other occasions. This pattern of misidentification was pointed out as early as January 2019, even prior to the photograph in question being taken in September of that year.
Shaki Pakis, who originally posted the photo, is a member of the Facebook group PML.N Lover,s, an online community with over 90,000 members. His post has been shared 1,500 times on Facebook, has elicited over 200 reactions, and over a dozen comments. Many of the comments are misogynistic and involve invoking “lanat” or curses on the former first lady.
Conclusion: The claim that Bushra Khan performed Umrah accompanied by both her current and former husbands is false. The man in the photograph with the then first-couple of Pakistan is Pakistani diplomat Shehryar Akbar Khan who has been repeatedly misidentified as Khawar Maneka on social media for the last several years.