Claim: Journalist Imran Riaz Khan tweeted an image of a woman in lockup who he claims is the wife of the driver of Dr Shahbaz Gill.
Fact: The image attributed to the driver’s wife is misleading. The image first surfaced in 2019 in relation to a murder case.
On 11 August 2022, Pakistani journalist Imran Riaz Khan tweeted an image of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) spokesperson Maryam Nawaz Sharif alongside another image of a woman in jail with an Urdu caption which translates to, “A woman directly insulting the military. The second woman is the wife of the driver of the accused in the contempt case.”
The caption refers to Dr Shahabaz Gill, chief of staff to former prime minister Imran Khan, who was arrested on sedition charges of earlier this month. After Gill’s arrest, Islamabad police raided the residence where his driver, Izhar, was staying at. Izhar’s wife, Mehreen, was taken into police custody on charges of rioting, assaulting a police party, and theft during police raid.
Fact or Fiction?
After Imran Riaz’s tweet, the image went viral on social media as users believe the woman photographed behind bars is Mehreen, the wife of Gill’s driver.
However, a Google Reverse Image Search revealed that the picture can be found online as early as 2019. The search led to an article published by The Frontier Post three years ago, titled “92 women in Sindh’s jails facing murder charges: survey”. The article also featured the same image of the woman in jail.
Comparison of the same image falsely shared in 2022
The Islamabad Police also debunked the claim on their official Twitter account stating that “the picture that went viral on social media is not of Shahbaz Gul’s driver’s wife. This picture is already from another province and has been uploaded on websites.”
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 30-day period from 21 July to 20 August using the following search terms:
- “دوسری عورت توہین کے مقدمے کے ملزم کے ڈرائیور کی بیوی ”
The results turned up 14,600 interactions across 257 public posts on Facebook. The same image with caption has been shared here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here between 11 – 23 August.
Conclusion: The image of a woman behind bars is not of the wife of Shahbaz Gill’s driver.