Claim: A video depicts the arrest of social media activist “Little Imran Khan” by the police.
Fact: The full video shows that the boy was not arrested. A clip cropped from the video went viral on social media, with viewers believing he was arrested. .
On 7 June 2023, several Twitter users claimed that law enforcement authorities arrested a child who is popular on social media as as ‘Chota Imran Khan’ for imitating former Prime Minister Imran Khan. On the same day, Twitter user @azharkaasifzai posted a video with a similar caption. The video shows a boy dressed as Imran Khan being taken out of a police van by two policemen, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers.
Fact or Fiction?
A reverse image search of the video keyframes found a similar video was uploaded to Youtube by the boy himself with the title “Imran Khan Best Word ! Chota Imran Khan Protocol In PTI Jalsa” on 18 April 2023.
Soch Fact Check compared the two videos and identified that the same policeman, the same boy with the same clothes and vest, and the same crowd, confirming that the two videos were filmed at the same setting and location.
An alternate angle shows the boy was not arrested, but only posed for pictures outside of and while sitting in a police van. Furthermore, the video that is being shared as proof of his arrest does not show any signs of hostility or resistance from the boy or the police. In fact, all the characters seen in the video can be seen posing together for a picture at the end of the video, smiling at the camera.
However, this does not mean that the young boy was not arrested at all. In fact, he was taken into custody on 7 June 2023. He uploaded a video of his arrest to his Youtube channel on 11 June 2023, after he was released from custody, showing him being taken away by the police in broad daylight. He also uploaded another video the next day, thanking his fans for their support while under arrest. While he was indeed arrested, the video that is being circulated as evidence of his arrest is not accurate, it is actually a video from a previous occasion.
Virality
The tweet from @azharkaasifzai on Twitter received 24k likes, 10.6k retweets, and 237.6k views.
Conclusion: A video of a young boy who resembles Imran Khan posing for pictures in a police van is being falsely circulated as a recent incident of his arrest by the police. The video is actually from May 2023 and shows him attending a PTI rally in Lahore as a fan of Imran Khan.
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