Claim: An image shows Amna Baig of the Islamabad police saluting Maryam Nawaz Sharif. Baig has also been nominated as the Head of the FIA team investigating the PTI foreign funding case.
Fact: The image is from 2017 and shows SSP Arsala Saleem saluting Maryam Nawaz while she attended a JIT hearing at the National Judicial Academy.
On 7 August 2022, a social media activist posted a tweet claiming that Islamabad police’s Amna Baig saluted Maryam Nawaz Sharif and has now been rewarded by being nominated the Head of the FIA team investigating the PTI Foreign funding case.
The tweet says: “[translation] Amna Baig who gave criminal Maryam Safdar a salute has now been appointed the leader of the FIA team investigating the foreign funding case against Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf.”
Fact or Fiction?
The image included in the tweet shows a woman in police uniform seeming to bow down in front of Maryam Nawaz Sharif. Soch Fact Check conducted a Google Reverse Image Search of this image and found several news articles reporting that SSP Arsala Naeem saluted Maryam Nawaz Sharif in July 2017 when the latter appeared at the National Judicial Academy for a JIT hearing of a case against her.
We found an image from the Business Recorder, which includes a different photograph of Maryam Nawaz Sharif from the same day, with the SSP who saluted her walking behind her facing the camera. The police officer pictured is not Amna Baig.
Image from the claim compared to other reported images from the same day.
Furthermore, in addition to Dawn and The News on 6 August 2022, the Express Tribune reported on 7 August 2022, that a five-member FIA special team was constituted to investigate the PTI foreign funding case under the leadership of Director Training Dr Muhammab Athar Waheed. Other members of the team include Additional Director Khalid Anees, Deputy Director Khawaja Hamad, Deputy Director Chaudhry Ejaz and Assistant Director Ejaz Ahmed Shaikh. Amna Baig was not reported as a member of this team.
To further verify whether Amna Baig was made in charge of the FIA investigation team, Soch Fact Check got in touch with the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) headquarters in Islamabad. FIA spokesperson Ms Sarwat Butt confirmed that Amna Baig was never inducted into the special team and was never made in charge of the investigation.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis of the post being verified and discovered that the post reached more than 32,022 followers and received more than 633 total interactions on Twitter.
Soch Fact Check also conducted a CT analysis on Twitter for the last 7 days using the following search terms
- “FIA” “amna” “baig”
We found various tweets claiming Amna Baig will lead the FIA special team. Some of these can be seen here and here.
Conclusion: A viral tweet claimed that Amna Baig was appointed as the Head of the FIA special team investigating the PTI foreign funding case because she saluted Maryam Nawaz. Soch Fact Check found that the tweet was false and confirmed that the image in question is from 2017 and the female officer who saluted Maryam Nawaz was not Amna Baig. Moreover, Baig was not nominated to be a member of the FIA special team investigating the PTI foreign funding case.