Fact check: Viral Instagram posts of Mahira Khan, Sajal Aly supporting Cockroach Janta Party's Oct 10 protest are fake

The protests began on Oct 2, with demonstrators accusing the Election Commission of India (ECI) of disenfranchising voters to benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP. Both the ECI and BJP denied the allegations.

Amid the demonstrations, the Gen Z-led CJP, headed by Abhijeet Dipke, announced plans to hold a major rally in New Delhi at Jantar Mantar on Oct 10, demanding free and fair elections. How it started.

On Oct 8, a BJP supportershareda post on X featuring images allegedly showing Mahira expressing support for the Oct 10 protest at Jantar Mantar through her Instagram stories.

The post was captioned: “Pakistani actress Mahira Khan supports the October 10 protest.”It also included her alleged Instagram story, followed by the following caption: “Still, people in India are thinking this is a genuine protest. No bro, it’s a regime-change protest against Modi, the BJP and Hindutva.

If they succeed, Pakistanis will return to India, and we might see a situation like 2007 again.”The post gained 523,000 views. The alleged story reads: “Just heard Abhijeet Dipke and Dhruv Rathee are going to protest against the BJP government on October 10.

Full support to this protest. I can’t come because the BJP has banned Pakistani actors from entering India. Hopefully, after this protest, relations between India and Pakistan will improve again.

Another BJP supportersharedthe same story with the following caption: “CJP has started receiving support from Pakistan.”The post gained 40,000 views on X.The claim was further shared by several other BJP supporters on X, further amplifying the virality, as can be seenhere, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, andhere; collectively accumulating 38,000 views.

Similarly, another visual circulating on social media purported to show an Instagram story shared by Sajal Aly, expressing support for protesters in India and suggesting that a change in the country’s government was imminent. The text in the alleged story read: “Heard someone is getting kicked out of power in the neighbouring country.

Well done, youth. Finally, the era of hatred will end. Hopefully, the new people in power will make our relations better, and we can work together again like brothers.”The Insta story snapshot wassharedby a BJP supporter with the following caption: “It’s one vs all now.

This is Sajal Aly, who works in Pakistani TV. She thinks the Modi regime is going to be changed. Even she knows that if Modi gets removed, the new people in power will again make Pakistan their best friend.

They will allow Pakistanis to come here and work. And then these snakes will silently plan attacks on our civilians. Pakistan, CJP, leftists and America want to defeat just one man.

It’ll be proper cinema if Modi Ji wins in 2029 despite all this foreign funding and paid agenda.”The post garnered 305,000 views on X.Another BJP supportersharedthe same claim on X with the following caption: “Pakistani actress wants regime change in India. Dumb Indians, open your eyes”The post attracted 80,000 views.

The claim was further shared by several other BJP supporters, further amplifying its virality, as can be seenhere, here, here, hereandhere. MethodologyA fact-check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to its high virality and keen public interest in the CJP protests in India, along with whether the Pakistani actresses had actually supported them or not.

A keyword search was conducted to verify whether any credible Indian or Pakistani media outlets had reported on the alleged Instagram stories, but nothing was found to corroborate them. Furthermore, no social media posts were found from Pakistani users, fans and media industry personnel commenting on or reacting to any such alleged posts, casting further doubt about their authenticity.

Inspecting Mahira’sofficial Instagram accountshowed no such story. Instagram stories automatically disappear after 24 hours, whereas the viral claim had surfaced on Oct 8. On closer examination of the viral post, the fingers of Abhijeet Dipke appear distorted, a common discrepancy in AI-generated images.

The image was analysed using OpenAI’s tool to detect the SynthID watermark, which identified a SynthID signal, indicating that the image was likely generated or edited using OpenAI tools. SynthID works by embedding an invisible digital watermark directly into AI-generated media content.

Unlike normal metadata, the watermark forms part of the content itself and is designed to remain detectable even after the media is doctored, such as cropping, applying filters or lossy compression. The photo was subsequently analysed using other AI-detection tools.

Sightengine flagged the visual as 99 per cent doctored, while AI or Not flagged it as 76pc AI-generated. Meanwhile, Decopy flagged the image as 91pc AI-generated and Fake Image Detector labelled it as 78pc doctored.

Similarly, for the claim regarding Sajal, her official. Instagramaccount also carried no such story. Meanwhile, analysing Sajal’s post using Truthscan flagged the image as 95pc doctored content.

Undetectable AI labelled it as 95pc edited, and Fake Image Detector flagged it as 76pc computer-generated or modified image. Fact-check status: false. The claim that screenshots of alleged Instagram posts from Mahira Khan and Sajal Ali show them supporting the CJP’s Oct 10 protest against the BJP party is false.

The viral visuals are AI-generated and the actresses have made no such posts.-----------------This fact check was originally published byi. Verify Pakistan—a project of CEJ-IBA and UNDP.