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Multiple Indian users on X have been sharing a notification from the Balochistan Home Department since October 26, allegedly featuring Bollywood actor Salman Khan’s name on the Fourth Schedule under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA). Adding someone’s name to the Fourth Schedule means the person has become proscribed. The Fourth Schedule is a list of proscribed individuals who are suspected of terrorism and/or sectarianism under the 1997 law.

However, the iVerify Pakistan team investigated this content and determined that it is false. To reach this conclusion, iVerify Pakistan conducted a keyword search to find the source and critically analysed the notification to corroborate the authenticity of the document.

How it started

On October 26, an Indian user on X shared a copy of the alleged notification issued by the Balochistan government.

The caption of the post said: “Bollywood actor Salman Khan’s name has reportedly been added by the Pakistan govt to its ‘Fourth Schedule’ — a list under its Anti-Terrorism Act used to monitor people suspected of links to banned groups or extremist activity. It’s a serious designation that restricts travel and finances, but in this case, it seems to have been used politically after his comment in Riyadh where he mentioned ‘Balochistan’ separately from ‘Pakistan’.”

The post gained 44,500 views.

Another Indian propagandist account on X shared the image with a similar claim.

“Big! Bollywood actor Salman Khan has reportedly been added to Pakistan’s ‘Fourth Schedule’ — a list under the Anti-Terrorism Act for monitoring suspected extremist links,” said the caption of the post, which gained 457,100 views.

The alleged development and notification were also reported by Pakistani digital media platform Urdu Leaks in an article the same day titled: “Pakistan declares Salman Khan a terrorist: Find out why?”

Multiple other X accounts picked up the claim and shared it too. The alleged notification with a similar claim was also shared on Facebook. Some Indian digital media outlets also shared the notification, including The Times of India.

The fact-checking process

A fact-check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to viral it became online. A keyword search yielded no coverage of the alleged development by any credible local or international mainstream news outlet.

Separately, a close examination of the alleged notification identified several discrepancies. Notably, it misspelt “committees” and “affiliated” as “committes” and “affilisted” in the first paragraph. In the third point of the document, “persons” was written as “persses”.

The alleged notification, dated October 16, states that the recommendation to put Salman was made on October 7. It also said the reason for his placement on the list was “independent Balochistan facilitator”.

A keyword search for “Salman Khan”, “Balochistan” and “Riyadh” yielded a video of the Saudi event where the actor made his comments about Balochistan. The video was uploaded to YouTube on Oct 17.

According to an Oct 20 report from The Hindustan Times, the actor attended the event from Oct 16 to 17 and made the following comment: “Right now, if you make a Hindi film and release it here [in Saudi Arabia], it will be a super hit. If you make a Tamil, Telugu or Malayali film, it will do hundreds of crores in business because so many people from other countries have come here. There are people from Balochistan, there are people from Afghanistan, there are people from Pakistan…everyone is working here.”

It was thus seen that the timing of the comment did not match up with when the alleged recommendation was made to put him on the Fourth Schedule on October 7. Furthermore, no prior recent instance was found of him mentioning Balochistan separately from Pakistan.

When contacted to corroborate the alleged notification, an official of the Balochistan Home Department confirmed to Dawn correspondent Abdullah Zehri that it was fake.

Furthermore, it was found that the information ministry had also rubbished the alleged development in a post on X on October 26, labelling it false.

Verdict

The claim that the Balochistan Home Department issued a notification placing Bollywood actor Salman Khan on the Fourth Schedule under the Anti-Terrorism Act is false.

The notification is fake, and no such development occurred.

This fact check was originally published by iVerify Pakistan — a project of CEJ-IBA and UNDP.