Pakistan has come out with a clarification on a few media reports that claimed that Islamabad has placed popular Bollywood actor Salman Khan on its terror watchlist.
It all began after the actor appeared at the Joy Forum 2025 in Riyadh, where fellow actors like Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan were also present. There had been many comments online after a short video of Salman Khan mentioning Balochistan during a panel discussion had gone viral.
“Right now, if you make a Hindi film and release it here (in Saudi Arabia), it will be a superhit. 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,” Salman Khan was quoted as saying.
The actor mentioning Pakistan and Balochistan did not go down well with a section of users.
Following the social media comments, some posts alleged that the comments on Balochistan led Pakistan to put the actor under the terror watchlist.
The fact-checking team of Pakistan’s ministry of information and broadcasting refuted the claim that "Salman Khan has allegedly been placed on Pakistan's 'Fourth Schedule' under its Anti-Terrorism Act after making remarks about Balochistan and is labelled a 'terror facilitator'.
The ministry stated that no Pakistani government official statement, notification or entry was found on NACTA’s proscribed persons page or any ministry of interior / provincial home department gazette notifying Salman Khan’s inclusion in Fourth Schedule.
“All publicly available reports stem from Indian media outlets repeating the allegation, but none trace back to an official Pakistani watch-list publication or formal announcement," the ministry said, calling the claims "unverified and false." "...this appears to be a sensational headline rather than a substantiated fact," it added.