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| - Fact Check: Old video of ballot theft from 2022 Karachi by-elections FALSELY shared as recent
India Today Fact Check found that the viral video isn't from the 2024 Pakistani general elections. It's two years old.
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India Today Fact Check
This video is from 2022 by-elections in Karachi. It has nothing to do with Pakistan’s 2024 general elections.
As Pakistanis cast their votes in the country’s general elections on February 8, a video of a person allegedly stealing ballots was widely shared. An X user wrote while sharing the clip, “Breaking News, early in the morning in Karachi, election staff are handing out ballot papers to people of PPP from the windows. Will the Election Commission notice? In Port Pakistan, the election staff is mixed with thieves. PTI keep a special eye on them”. Its archive can be seen here.
Former Prime Ministers Shehbaz and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Bilawal Bhutto-led Pakistan People's Party (PPP) are the two major parties in this election. Reportedly, members of ex-PM Imran Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf have been forced to participate independently after the party was prohibited from using their “cricket bat” election symbol.
India Today Fact Check found that the viral video isn’t from the 2024 Pakistani general elections. It’s two years old.
Our Probe
A reverse image search of screengrabs from the viral video led us to the same clip uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Samaa TV, a leading Pakistani news channel, on June 16, 2022. As per the video report, during by-elections for the National Assembly seat of Karachi's NA-240 constituency, a presiding officer was caught stealing ballot papers.
We searched for media reports about this incident and found a video report by Geo News, published in June 2022, which featured the same viral clip. The report said that the incident happened during Karachi's NA-240 constituency elections that were taking place after the seat fell vacant following the death of National Assembly member Muhammad Ali Khan of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan on April 19, 2022.
As per reports, the incident happened at the office of the presiding officer, who was later arrested.
Thus, it’s clear that a 2022 video from Karachi by-elections was falsely shared as ballot-theft during the 2024 general elections in Pakistan
(Written by Ashish Kumar)
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