Claim
Death of former National Assembly speaker Illahi Bux Soomro
Rating Justification
The iVerify Pakistan team has checked this content and has established that it is false.
To arrive to this verdict, the IVerify Pakistan team was alerted to a clarification from a family member of former National Assembly (NA) speaker Illahi Bux Soomro by a media partner.
HOW IT STARTED
On January 25, 2024, several media outlets ran reports about Soomro’s death.
State-run APP published a report titled “PM condoles over demise or ex-NA Speaker Elahi Bux Soomro”.
Dunya News published a news report on its website with the title “Former NA speaker Elahi Bakhsh Soomro passes away”.
Similar reports were also published by GNN and UrduPoint.
METHODOLOGY
iVerify Pakistan’s media partner Dawn alerted that a family member of Soomro reached out to confirm that the reports were incorrect and the ex-NA speaker was alive.
Corroborating the assertion, the iVerify platform further found that some media outlets, such as Samaa News, Business Recorder and state-run Radio Pakistan, which had initially published the news, had taken down their stories.
Performing a keyword search for these outlets with Soomro’s full name showed links and stories about the death but clicking on the links showed empty pages.
BACKGROUND
Soomro is a prominent political figure who served as the NA speaker from 1997 to 2001.
CONCLUSION
The iVerify Pakistan platform thus concluded that news of Soomro’s passing as run by numerous media outlets, including state-run agencies, was false.