Fact-check: Viral photo of Justice Ayesha Malik misrepresented as meeting PTI members

Online users are sharing a photo of Supreme Court’s Justice Ayesha A Malik alleging that she recently met women members of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

The claim is false.

Claim

On June 27, a user on X, formerly known as Twitter, posted a photo of Justice Malik standing next to two women. The user captioned the picture as: “Justice Ayesha Malik with the women of PTI.” The post has been viewed over 500 times, to date.

On June 29, a politician also shared the same photo and wrote: “Honourable Justice of the Supreme Court with the workers of a political party. If we say anything beyond this it would be contempt of court.” This post had been viewed over 361,000 times, reposted over 1,000 times, and liked over 2,800 times, at the time of writing.

Identical claims were also shared here, here and here.

Fact

In reality, the photo is not recent and was snapped back in 2018. Neither does it show a meeting between a political party and Justice Malik, but instead was taken during a conference on violence against women organised by the United Nations in Lahore, Punjab.

Lahore-based lawyer Khadija Siddiqi, who can be seen in the viral photo with the judge, confirmed to Geo Fact Check that the picture was from the conference five years ago. The lawyer also shared the same image posted on her Facebook page in 2018.

Siddiqi explained that the conference took place in September 2018, at a time when Justice Malik was a judge at the Lahore High Court. “She had been invited as a chief guest [to the event],” the lawyer said. Siddiqi further denied that she was a member or worker of PTI.

The third woman in the photo was identified as Fatima Shaheen, a television anchor.

Geo Fact Check also found other pictures from the event in 2018 which showed the judge with several lawyers.

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