Altered videos of actors Hrithik Roshan, Salman Khan, and Akshay Kumar supporting former Pakistan PM Imran Khan following his arrest are circulating on Facebook. BOOM found that the videos were fake and a different audio was overlaid into the video to make the false claim.
Imran Khan was arrested on May 9, 2023, outside the Islamabad High Court for more than 100 cases against him of corruption, blasphemy, terrorism, and sedition, among others.
Following his arrest, these doctored videos of the three actors are being shared to claim that they support Khan and have spoken against his unlawful arrest. The video shows the flag of Pakistan in the background while Roshan is heard saying, "For the sake of humanity, speak up for Imran Khan." The videos are being shared with the caption, "indian actress hrithik roshan & akshay kumar & salman khan Support imran khan".
The same video also has a 13-second clip where Salman Khan is showing his support for Khan followed by Akshay Kumar making a similar statement.
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BOOM had previously fact-checked two altered videos of Akshay Kumar that were peddled with the false claim that he expressed his support for Palestine. Read here.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the videos were digitally altered and the original videos did not show the actors talking about Imran Khan.
A reverse image search of Hrithik Roshan's clip on Google led us to a tweet by @iSaumyaHrithik who had posted about their interaction with Roshan on a zoom meeting one day before his birthday. The tweet, uploaded on January 9, 2023, had similar visuals of Hrithik from our viral video.
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A keyword search on Youtube with "hrithik roshan fan interaction zoom birthday" led us to the original and longer version of this Zoom meeting uploaded on January 10, 2023 by the channel Hrithik Rules. The title of the video was 'EXCLUSIVE : Hrithik Roshan Birthday Special Fan Interaction FULL VIDEO | Krrish 4, Fighter, Jadoo'. The Zoom interaction was arranged ahead of Hrithik Roshan's birthday this year and gave fans the chance to interact with him directly and ask him questions. A still from the video at 41:25 was an exact match to a still from our viral video.
We found the original video of Salman Khan on his Instagram page. Uploaded on April 21, 2023, Khan was heard talking about how he was travelling to Dubai to celebrate Eid.
Finally, a reverse image search of a still from Akshay Kumar's portion in the video led us to another similar video uploaded on Twitter on May 10. While the video made the same claim, it used slightly different visuals where Kumar is seen pointing to the smart watch on his wrist like in an advertisement.
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Using this information, we used keywords like "akshay kumar smart watch advertisement" and found the original video uploaded on YouTube on November 22, 2019 by a smart watch company called GOQii. In the video, Kumar is heard talking about the preventative healthcare measures provided by the GOQii watch and its ECG readings.
Here is a comparison of all the original videos to the viral videos with the claim linked to Imran Khan.
