On March 11, 2024, a post circulating on social media platform X showed a statement purportedly made by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that persecuted Indian Muslims would be granted citizenship in Pakistan. However, there has been no such announcement and the viral image appears to be tampered with.
Newly elected PM Shehbaz Sharif announces citizenship laws for Indian Muslims
The iVerify Pakistan team has checked this content and has established that it is false.
To arrive at this verdict, the iVerify Pakistan team examined Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s official X account and ran the circulated image through image manipulation detection tools.
On March 11, 2024, a post circulated on social media platform X stating that newly-elected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif claimed that persecuted Indian Muslims would be granted citizenship in Pakistan.
According to the circulated image, PM Shehbaz Sharif said, “To counter the Indian govt’s undemocratic and communal CAA, the Govt of Pakistan has decided to notify Pakistan’s own CAA, in which Indian Muslims who feel persecuted in India will be given the citizenship of Pakistan”.
“Full support to Pakistan PM,” read the caption of a post by an account who appeared to be an Indian user according to her past posts. The post gained over one million views.
The same image of PM Shehbaz’s post was reshared by several Indian accounts here, here, and here with different captions.
The iVerify Pakistan team aimed to ascertain the truthfulness of the claim due to its high virality and because it came around shortly after Shehbaz assumed the premiership of the country.
The timing also coincides with the Indian government’s recent move to enforce the Citizenship Amendment Act ahead of the elections.
Initially, the iVerify team examined the official X account of PM Shehbaz Sharif to confirm if any official statement had been issued regarding the claim. It was discovered that his latest tweet was on March 10, with no posts on March 11.
Subsequently, the team utilised the social media tracking website Social Blade to determine if any posts had been deleted from the official account. The research revealed that no posts were made after March 10, suggesting that the viral screenshot was indeed fabricated.
Furthermore, the iVerify Pakistan team utilised the circulated screenshot on the image manipulation detection tool Fake Image Detector, which also confirmed that the image had been doctored.
It’s important to note that although the user utilised the same X handle and profile of PM Shehbaz, it still seems to be altered, as the time and date displayed at the bottom of the X post appear to differ from the original.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) grants Indian nationality to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before December 31, 2014.
The law was enacted in December 2019 but not implemented before now.
Muslim groups say the law, combined with a proposed national register of citizens, can discriminate against India’s 200 million Muslims — the world’s third-largest Muslim population. They fear the government might remove the citizenship of Muslims without documents in some border states.
The government denies it is anti-Muslim and says the law is needed to help minorities facing persecution in Muslim-majority nations.
It says the law is meant to grant citizenship, not take it away from anyone, and has called the earlier protests politically motivated.
The iVerify Pakistan team has determined that the claim regarding PM Shehbaz Sharif circulated by Indian accounts is false.
The team examined the prime minister’s official X account and found no post on the offer of citizenship to persecuted Indian Muslims.
