Claim: The Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi freed Imran Khan from jail.
Fact: This claim is false. Khan has not been freed from jail.
On 12 November 2024, a post on Facebook shared a video, claiming that the Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi had released former Prime Minister Imran Khan from jail. The caption of the post read as follows in Urdu:
“الحمدللہ عمران کو رہا کردیا گیا ، چیف جسٹس”
According to Google Translate, this reads as follows in English:
“Alhamdulillah Imran has been released, Chief Justice”.
The video itself featured three embedded captions as well. The first two were incomplete, but the third was a full sentence. They read as follows in Urdu:
یحییٰ آفریدی نے حکومت کو ہلا د”
چیف جسٹس میں ہوں، میں ہی فیسلے کروں
“یحییٰ آفریدی نے عمران خان کو رہا کر دیا گیا۔
According to Google Translate, they read as follows in English:
“Yahya Afridi shook the government”
“I am the Chief Justice, I will decide”
“Imran Khan was released by Yahya Afridi.”
This post likely comes amid news of increased engagement between Afridi and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). On 30 January 2025, it was reported that the former premier had written a letter to the incumbent Chief Justice of Pakistan about the current state of affairs in the country, highlighting “issues related to human rights violations, electoral fraud, and the arrests of PTI workers”.
On 11 February, it was reported that the Chief Justice had forwarded this letter to the Constitutional Bench for review.
Moreover, on 21 February, the former premier’s top aides held a meeting with the Chief Justice to discuss the drafting of the National Judicial Policy.
Fact or Fiction?
If Khan had indeed been released from jail, the news would be widespread and reported on by credible news outlets in Pakistan.
The viral post this article is investigating features two videos with small frames. One is of a crowd and the other of people running in front of a car. However, running reverse-image searches of keyframes of these videos did not provide any viable results.
There is also a voice in the background that can be heard saying “خان صاحب کوچیف جسٹس آف پاکستان نے رہا کیا ہے” (“Khan has been freed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan”). Suspecting that the videos may be from celebrations that took place when Khan was granted bail in certain cases in 2023 and 2024, we searched Google and YouTube for “Imran Khan bail celebrate”. However, none of the videos matched the ones in the post.
A Google search for “Imran Khan freed”, did not yield any news of the former premier having been released from jail. If anything, the search results showed that Khan was recently convicted in a case on 17 January 2025, in which he was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Bushra Bibi, his wife, was also sentenced to seven years in prison. Khan and his wife “are accused of accepting a gift of land from a real estate tycoon in exchange for laundered money when Khan was in power,” The Associated Press reported.
Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023 in a number of other cases, including anti-terrorism charges in relation to the violence that followed his arrest in May 2023. Hence, Soch Fact Check concludes that the claim is false, and Imran Khan remains imprisoned. He has not been freed by Justice Yahya Afridi.
Virality
On Facebook, the post has amassed 94 K reactions and the video 5.7 million views.
Conclusion: Chief Justice Yahya Afridi has not released Imran Khan from jail. Regarding the letter that Khan penned to Afridi, the Chief Justice has only forwarded it to the Constitutional Bench for review. Soch Fact Check rates this claim as false.
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Background image in cover photo: Dawn