Claim: A photo showing several injured police officers in a hospital is from the Bahawalnagar incident when members of the Pakistan Armed Forces assaulted police officers.
Fact: The photo is from last year when members of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) attacked the Lahore police.
On 12 April 2024, several social media users shared an image of injured police officers on X, with the following caption:
متاثرین بہاولنگر
[Translation: Victims of Bahawalnagar]
Several videos around the Bahawalnagar incident were shared on social media, showing Pakistan army soldiers assaulting and torturing police officials in Bahawalnagar. According to the ISPR, Pakistan Army’s official media wing, the incident is being jointly investigated by the army and the police. These videos show police officers talking about the torture they were subjected to. According to them, they were stripped naked, beaten, injected with an unknown substance, and had nails hammered into their bodies.
IG Punjab police also shared a statement on the incident, where he condemned social media users for reprimanding the military officers who engaged in violence against the police officers and stated that the Pakistan Army and the Punjab police are working closely together to resolve the matter.
In the aftermath of the incident, one Punjab police officer, Constable Muhammad Faisal Khan, resigned from the police force and set his police uniform on fire in protest of the Bahawalnagar incident. Although the matter is still under investigation and no concrete information has yet come to light, some social media users claim that this violence took place because the Bahawalnagar police conducted a raid at the household of a Pakistan Army officer.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse image search of the photograph and found that it was first shared in 2021.
Alamgir Khan, a member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, shared it on his Facebook profile on 15 April 2021.
Another social media user, Hussain, also shared the image on X on 13 April 2021, with the caption: “Policemen’s injured by #TLP workers in #Lahore hospitals #TLPNationWideProtest”
In April 2021, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a militant, right-wing political party attacked Lahore police, holding several officers hostage, physically attacking hundreds of police officers across the country, and killing four. According to Dawn, “Over 300 policemen in Punjab, including 97 in Lahore, had sustained injuries, many of them seriously, after the violent protesters attacked them with clubs, bricks and firearms.”
Virality
On X, we found that the claim was shared here, here, here, here, and here, reaching more than 220,400 views in total.
On Facebook we found the claim shared here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On Instagram, we found that the claim was shared here, here, and here.
Conclusion: An image of injured police officers in a hospital room is from Lahore last year, not Bahawalnagar.
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Background image in cover photo: ARY News
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