Claim: A video shows Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi while Khan was in power.
Fact: The video in question is from December 2015 when Khan and Modi met in Delhi. Khan was not Pakistan’s prime minister at the time.
Fact or Fiction?
On 5 June 2022, Facebook user Muhammad Arham Rahmat Malakand shared a video that shows former PM Imran Khan meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. . The caption of the post suggests the two met while Khan was in power. The caption reads, “عمران خان مودوی کو پوری کابینہ سمیت انڈیا میں جا کے ملے تو وہ صحیح ہے اگر مودی نواز شریف کو پاکستان میں ملنے آئے تو نواز شریف غدار ہے مودی کا یار ہے [If Imran Khan went to India to meet Modi with his whole cabinet, that’s considered right but if Modi came to Pakistan to meet Nawaz Sharif, he is a traitor and is sympathetic to Modi].”
Multiple groups also shared the claim including, here, here, here, here, here and here, among others.
The 24-second clip shows Khan standing by Modi’s side as other politicians from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, including; Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Naeemul Haque and Aun Chaudhry, greet the Indian PM.
Soch Fact Check ascertained that the video did the rounds on social media in October 2020 as well. It was shared by Muhammad Jaan on 4 October 2022 with the same caption.
Soch Fact Check found the video to be misleading after searching Google using keywords from the claim. A report published 11 December 2015 by The Economic Times and titled, “Imran Khan meets PM Narendra Modi”, appeared as a result of the search.
Other outlets including ANI News, India Today and Zee Hindustan also reported the meeting.
Khan was visiting Delhi in 2015 as a guest of the India Today group.
Khan was not Pakistan’s prime minister in 2015. His party, the PTI had formed a government in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province with the backing of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in 2013. In 2018, PTI formed a coalition government in the centre after sweeping the general elections.
Virality:
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the seven-day period leading up to 6 June 2022 using the following search term:
- عمران خان مودوی کو پوری کابینہ سمیت انڈیا میں جا کے ملے تو وہ صحیح ہے اگر مودی نواز شریف کو پاکستان میں ملنے آئے تو نواز شریف غدار ہے مودی کا یار ہے [If Imran Khan went to India to meet Modi with his whole cabinet, that’s considered right but if Modi came to Pakistan to meet Nawaz Sharif, he is a traitor and is sympathetic to Modi]
The search term turned up 5,334 interactions across 106 posts.
The analysis revealed that Muhammad Arham Rahmat Malakand’s post received one like, four shares and 53 views, while Muhammad Jaan’s post received 1,200 likes and 552,000 views.
A post shared on Facebook group Pakistan Real Pilitics is performing 7.81x better than other similar posts with 101 likes and 178 shares.
Conclusion: The viral video in question is not recent but is, in fact, from December 2015 when Narendra Modi and Imran Khan met in Delhi. Khan did not meet Modi while he was in office.