Claim: Salman Ahmad of Junoon has been arrested recently.
Fact: Old videos of Salman Ahmad being arrested were shared out of context.
On 25 March 2023, YouTuber Imran Riaz Khan shared a tweet claiming Salman Ahmad, a former member of the band Junoon, had been arrested. At the same time, a video was shared on WhatsApp showing the ex-musician being picked up by the police as he shouted, “Mene qanoon konsa tora hai? Ap citizens ko harass kar rahay hain. Mein UN ka goodwill ambassador hun. Aap dekh rahay hain, mene konsa qanoon tora hai? Kia qanoon tora hai? Kis ka qanoon tora hai” [Translation: Which law have I broken? You are harassing citizens. I am the UN’s goodwill ambassador. You can see, which law have I broken? What law have I broken? Whose law have I broken?]. This video was captioned, “Salman Ahmad of Junoon abducted at Iftari time today.”
Fact or Fiction?
Salman Ahmad is very active on Twitter; we viewed his Twitter profile and saw him posting throughout the day on 25 March 2023 and then on 26 March 2023 as well, showing no signs of him having been arrested.
Soch Fact Check also conducted a thorough search of all mainstream new media organizations for any news of Salman Ahmad’s arrest, but we found that there had been no articles published on 25 and 26 March 2023 claiming that he was arrested.
On closer inspection, it can be seen in the video that the arrest is taking place in broad daylight, which is not anywhere near the time of iftar, which coincides with the time of sunset. And the Express Tribune logo could be seen on the top right corner of the frame of the video.
Google Reverse Image Search linked the video to this article on Express Tribune’s website from 28 October 2016, headlined “Singer Salman Ahmed released after brief detention”, with the subheadline “Video footage showed the singer being dragged by Islamabad police into a police van”. The article is also linked to a longer version of the same video footage here on Facebook.
Virality
Imran Riaz Khan’s tweet gained a total of 35,700 interactions and reached 15,763,704 followers on Twitter. The tweet was viewed 2.3 million times on Twitter.
The WhatsApp forward video was labelled “forwarded many times” on WhatsApp.
Conclusion: Salman Ahmad has not been arrested at iftar time.