These photos show Imran Khan celebrating Diwali in 2014, before he became Pakistan’s Prime Minister

This article is more than one year old.
Published on November 5, 2019 at 10:00
2 min read
By AFP India

Two photos of Imran Khan have been shared thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter which claim they show the Pakistani prime minister celebrating the Hindu festival of Diwali with Hindus in Pakistan. The claim is false; the images actually show Khan marking Diwali in Pakistan in October 2014, four years before he became Prime Minister.

This photo was published here in a Facebook post on October 26, 2019. The post has been shared more than 2,500 times.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:

The post’s Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “Pakistan PM Imran Khan celebrating Diwali with the Pakistani Hindus. Remember that in India Eid celebrations are banned inside Presidential Palace.”

Imran Khan is the current Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Diwali is a Hindu festival, while Eid is a Muslim festival.

Religious celebrations including Eid and Diwali have been banned in India’s Presidential Palace -- locally known as Rashtrapati Bhavan -- since President Ram Nath Kovind assumed the office in July 2017.

The information was dispensed in a series of messages posted on June 6, 2018, here on Twitter by a former secretary to the President of India Ashok Malik.

The photo was also published here, here, here and here on Facebook, and here and here on Twitter alongside an identical same claim.

The claim is false; the photos show Khan marking Diwali at an interfaith harmony event in Pakistan in 2014, four years before he was elected prime minister of Pakistan in 2018.

A reverse image search on Yandex found the first photo in the misleading Facebook post is identical to this photo published by Imran Khan on his official Twitter account on November 10, 2015.

One of the memorable moments of the dharna last year - celebrating Diwali with the Hindu community. pic.twitter.com/tyLuU3Svc1
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) November 10, 2015

The tweet states: “One of the most memorable moments of the dharna last year - celebrating Diwali with the Hindu community.”

Another reverse image search found the second image in the misleading post was used in this report published on October 20, 2014.

Below is a screenshot of the news report:

Another photo from the same event was shared here on October 20, 2014, on the official twitter account of Pakistan’s political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, whose founder and chairman is Imran Khan.

The tweet states: “Chairman Imran Khan cutting the Diwali Cake with everyone on #PTI4InterFaithHarmony day yesterday.”

Below is a screenshot of the photo shared by PTI on their official Twitter account with a watermark which states: “Azadi March, Islamabad Minorities Day, October 19, 2014.”

The minorities day event was reported here by Pakistan based newspaper Dawn and here by Indian based newspaper The Economic Times in October 2014.

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