Claim: Posters of Imran Khan have been put up in India in June 2024 to show support for the former Pakistani prime minister while he remains incarcerated.
Fact: The clip circulating on WhatsApp is a news report from over four years ago about posters of Khan and Indian politician Navjot Singh Sidhu that were put up in Amritsar to congratulate the two for the Kartarpur Corridor project. It was broadcast by TV9 Bharatvarsh on 5 November 2019. There are no authentic reports of such posters in India at present.
On 6 June 2024, Soch Fact Check received a video on WhatsApp containing a clip of a news report in the Hindi language and text superimposed on it that reads as follows:
“انڈیا میں پاکستان زندہ باد کے بعد عمران خان کے پوسٹر بھی لگ گئے
[After [chants] of ‘Pakistan Zindabad’, posters of Imran Khan have been put up in India]”
The claim has also been circulating on Facebook since 4 June 2024, a day after Imran Khan, the former prime minister and founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), was acquitted (archive) by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in the cipher case (archive) along with Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a party member and the ex-foreign minister.
The Imran Khan fiasco
Khan was first arrested (archive) on 9 May 2023 on the orders of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) over charges of corruption in the Al-Qadir Trust case (archive). His detention triggered violent, country-wide protests and he was released (archive) a few days later after the Supreme Court of Pakistan intervened.
The PTI founder was arrested (archive) and imprisoned for a second time on 5 August 2023, after a court ruled that his “dishonesty [was] established beyond doubt” in the Toshakhana case. He has been incarcerated since then.
In January 2024, just a month before the 2024 general elections in Pakistan, he was sentenced for a total of 31 years over charges of corruption, leaking state secrets, and an un-Islamic marriage, according to these reports (archived here and here).
Most recently, Khan was seen for the first time (archive) since his incarceration in an apparently leaked photo from the 16 May 2024 Supreme Court proceedings that allowed him an appearance via a video link.
A day prior to the court proceedings, the PTI leader was granted (archive) bail in a corruption case. Earlier, the sentences handed down to him in two of the four cases he was convicted in were also suspended; one of them (archive) was the Toshakhana case. However, he would not be released from jail, his lawyer said (archive).
In July, it was reported that Khan was acquitted in two other cases (archived here and here) by Pakistani courts.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reviewed the viral video, which is a news clip about posters of Imran Khan and Navjot Singh Sidhu, a leader of the Indian National Congress (INC) and former member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the parliament, being put up in Amritsar.
The news anchor in the viral clip talks about the Kartarpur Corridor, a visa-free border crossing linking India and Pakistan that opened in 2018 during the Khan administration’s tenure and facilitates the Sikh community’s pilgrimage between two worshipping places: Gurdwara Darbar Sahib and Gurdwara Dera Baba Nanak.
The anchor goes on to say that the “sensational” act of putting up the posters of a Pakistani leader, who “talks about destroying India”, occurred for the first time in India. The move was carried out by Sidhu’s party and fans, he adds.
Text that appears on the news cards is as follows:
- “अमृतसर में इमरान खान के पोस्टर [Imran Khan posters in Amritsar]”
- “सिद्धू समर्थक पर पोस्टर लगवाने का आरोप [Sidhu supporter accused of putting up posters]”
- “अमृतसर में इमरान खान और सिद्धू के पोस्टर [Posters of Imran Khan and Sidhu in Amritsar]”
- “करतारपुर कॉरिडोर को लेकर लगाए गए पोस्टर [Posters put up regarding Kartarpur corridor]”
Multiple Indian and Pakistani media outlets published reports about the banners featuring Imran Khan and Navjot Sidhu; these include ANI News, Hindustan Times, NDTV, The Hindu, and India.com, as well as Dunya News, Geo News Urdu, and Express Tribune.
According to a 6 November 2019 video report (archive) by The Times of India, the posters read, “Navjot Singh Sidhu and Imran Khan are the real heroes for opening Kartarpur Corridor.” Master Harpal Singh — a councillor from Verka, a suburb in Indian Punjab’s Amritsar district — was quoted in the report as saying, “We wanted to congratulate the people who made it happen, Sidhu sahab aur Imran Khan.”
The publication’s Chandigarh-focused page reported (archive) that Sidhu’s “loyalists continue to highlight ‘his wisdom and political acumen’ which led to the opening of Kartarpur corridor”. It included a longer version of the Punjabi text on the posters that, when translated into English, reads, “We Punjabis proudly say that its (opening of Kartarpur corridor) credit goes to Navjot Singh Sidhu and Imran Khan because we are not ungrateful.”
“The banners were put up by Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee secretary Harpal Singh Verka, whose wife Parminder Kaur is the municipal councillor from ward number 21 that falls under Sidhu’s assembly constituency Amritsar (East),” the article added.
According to the 6 November 2019 report by ANI News, also available on YouTube, the posters read, “The real heroes who get the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor open. We Punjabis fearlessly give credit to Navjot Singh Sidhu and Imran Khan because we are not ungrateful people.”
Soch Fact Check also identified the news channel whose video report is being circulated in the viral claim as TV9 Bharatvarsh, which posted the clip here on X (formerly Twitter) on 5 November 2019.
Lastly, there are no verifiable reports of posters of Imran Khan’s face being put up in India at present. Fact-checkers at an Indian outlet accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), of which Soch Fact Check is also a signatory, also confirmed the same to us.
Therefore, the claim is false.
Virality
Soch Fact Check was able to trace the video to @mlaiqkhan, the user who originally posted it on TikTok, where it has been viewed over 1.3 million times so far. It was also shared here and here on the same platform.
The false claim was posted here, here, here, and here on Facebook, here and here on X, here on YouTube, and here on Instagram.
Conclusion: Posters of Imran Khan were not put up in India in June 2024 to show support for the former Pakistani prime minister. The viral clip contains a news report from 5 November 2019, broadcast by TV9 Bharatvarsh. The anchor talks about posters featuring Khan and Indian politician Navjot Singh Sidhu that were put up in Amritsar in 2019 to congratulate the two for the Kartarpur Corridor project.
Background image in cover photo: ImranKhanOfficial
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