Claim: PTI politician Farrukh Habib was also arrested with Fawad Chaudhry.
Fact: Farrukh Habib was not arrested on 25 January 2023. Several video clips and tweets prove that he was not arrested.
On 25 January 2023, following reports of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Vice President Fawad Chaudhry’s arrest, social media users began to share the claim that PTI politician Farrukh Habib was also arrested with him.
Due to the large volume of posts sharing this news, Soch Fact Check decided to fact-check this claim.
Fact or Fiction?
Several videos on social media shared by PTI fan pages and on Farrukh Habib’s official Twitter profile show Farrukh Habib trying to physically stop the car that Fawad Chaudhry was in and then later entering Zaman Park as well.
Soch Fact Check also reviewed all official social media accounts of PTI and came across no such announcements regarding Farrukh Habib’s arrest.
This video and this image of politician Farrukh Habib entering Zaman Park were posted at least 1 hour after the misinformation regarding his arrest went viral on social media, further proving that he hadn’t been arrested with Fawad Chaudhry.
This video, tweeted by Fawad Chaudhry’s wife, also proves that Farrukh Habib was not arrested; he was only trying to prevent Fawad Chaudhry’s arrest by standing in front of the car. It was posted at 2:10 am the next day.
These videos and the lack of any official announcements from PTI are enough to ascertain that Farrukh Habib was not arrested.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 2-day period since 25 January 2023 to 26 January 2023 using the following search terms:
- “Farrukh Habib” “arrested”
- “فرخ حبیب گرفتار”
We found posts on Facebook here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. On Twitter we found tweets sharing the claim here, here, here, here and here.
On Facebook, we found that 6600 people were talking about the keywords “فرخ حبیب گرفتار” in the few hours after this misinformation broke as news.
Conclusion: PTI politician Farrukh Habib has not been arrested.