Fact-check: Woman in the photo with Imran Khan is not Indian

Multiple Twitter users are sharing a photo and falsely claiming that the woman sitting next to former prime minister Imran Khan is an Indian citizen, who has been photo-edited into the image with him.

Some social media users appear to believe the claim, even though it is false.

Claim

“The skilled people of the cyber-cells have photoshopped this woman, who was attending a wedding in India,” read a tweet, published on February 12, “They have made her sit next to Imran Khan and shared the image on the [party’s] official page too.”

The tweet had been viewed over 100,000 times on the microblogging website, at the time of writing.

Underneath the tweet, some social media users accused the former prime minister and his political party of “lying” and “propaganda”.

Fact

The photo has not been doctored.

It was taken on January 31, 2020, at an event in Islamabad held for the government-run social protection program, the Ehsaas Kafalat. At the time, Imran Khan was the prime minister of Pakistan.

On the day, a monthly stipend of Rs2,000 was distributed amongst poor women.

“This woman was asked to sit with the [then] prime minister,” Dr Sania Nishtar, who was overlooking the Ehsaas program at the time, told Geo Fact Check over the phone.

The event was also covered live by the state-run channel, PTV, where the woman can be clearly seen sitting next to Khan and later receiving a cash disbursement from Dr Nishtar.

The video was shared by the Twitter account of the Prime Minister Office too in 2020.

Neither is the woman an Indian citizen, as claimed on social media. Her name is Maqsood Bibi and she lives in Chakwal, Punjab.

Bibi was among the 12 women who were given cash stipends that day in 2020.

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