No, this is not a photo of the Pakistani Information Minister

This article is more than one year old.
Published on December 19, 2018 at 15:00
2 min read
By AFP Pakistan

Multiple Facebook posts have shared a photo which claims to show Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry half naked and morbidly obese. The claim is false, the photo has been doctored from an original image of an overweight Irish man with Chaudhry’s face superimposed on top.

The image has been posted by multiple Facebook accounts, for example here where it has received more than 12,000 shares since it was posted December 15.

Screenshot of misleading Facebook post

It contains a photo purportedly showing Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry looking morbidly obese and wearing only a pair of red shorts.

The caption says in Urdu: "First he ate the money of Musharraf, then (Pakistan) People's Party and now he is eating the money of PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) . He is making people fools by raising fake slogans about corruption. This fat gang."

Chaudhry has worked for former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan People’s Party and most recently the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party headed by former cricketer turned Prime Minister Imran Khan.

He has been the country’s information minister since August.

A reverse image search on Google found the original photo here which shows a morbidly obese Irish man Ritchie Doyle.

Screenshot of original image

The image has been flipped, a tattoo has been removed from one arm and Chaudhry’s head has been superimposed on top of Doyle’s.

Here are both images side by side:

Real image and misleading image

The similar images of Doyle have appeared in multiple online reports, for example here in the Irish Independent and here in the Daily Mail.

According to this report Doyle passed away in July 2016.

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