Claim: An image of PML-N head Nawaz Sharif watching something on his phone is being shared with captions that imply he was watching Imran Khan’s August 13 political rally.
Fact: The politician was watching his daughter’s political rally from July; the image was posted to Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s Twitter last month.
On August 14 2022, the verified Twitter account of Hans Mansoor Badvi, whose bio states he is the former social media head for PTI in Sindh tweeted an image of Nawaz Sharif purportedly watching a video of Imran Khan’s 13 August 2022 political rally on a phone.
The image was captioned “Picture of the day #اے _قابض _کر _آزاد _مجھے “ which translates to, “Oh possessor free me.” Moreover, the image is annotated “IK live Julsa ” which implies that Sharif is watching Imran Khan’s rally. The image was reposted numerous times with captions reaffirming the claim such as “Watching IK’s Lahore jalsa (rally)”.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse image searched the image through Google and found multiple hits for the image before August 13, 2022, which meant it was not possible the image showed Mian Nawaz Sharif watching Imran Khan’s August 13, 2022 rally in Lahore.
The image was initially posted by the PML-N leader’s daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif, to her Twitter account on July 3, 2022, which means the August 14, 2022 tweet by @hansbadvi is misleading as it used an image out of context to imply that Nawaz Sharif is watching Imran Khan’s rally when he was actually watching his daughter’s.
Virality
The image tweeted by Hans Masroor Badvi reached 171,476 followers and received over 579 Twitter interactions. Apart from this it was also shared on Twitter here, here and here.
The image was also shared on Facebook here and here.
Conclusion: An image of Nawaz Sharif watching Maryam Nawaz’s political rally on his smartphone went viral after it was shared with misleading captions and annotations to make it seem like Sharif was watching Khan’s political rally.