Claim: A video shows the body of a boy who was killed by the police during the protests over an alleged rape incident at a Punjab Group of Colleges campus.
Fact: The clip is authentic but unrelated to the protests. It shows a student who was shot dead in Alipur Chattha by a boy of the same age while on way to his college on 8 October 2024. The incident predates the reports of the alleged rape.
[Content warning: This fact-check contains graphic content showing blood and a dead body.]
On 16 October 2024, X (formerly Twitter) user @SaraMirGilgity posted (archive) a video showing several people, including rescue officials, standing around the dead body of a boy with a bloodied head. The accompanying caption reads as follows:
“الرٹ الرٹ الرٹ _______🚨🚨🚨
[Alert Alert Alert _______🚨🚨🚨]”
“مریم نواز نے پنجاب میں طالبات کو قتل عام کروانا شروع کر دیا ،بتایا تھا یہ دہشت گرد عورت ہے یہ دہشت گردی پھیلانے پاکستان میں واپس ائی ہے
[Maryam Nawaz started massacring female students in Punjab, told you that she is a terrorist woman and she has returned to Pakistan to spread terrorism.]”
“اپنے بھگوڑے باپ کو لے کے
[Alongside her fugitive father]”
The X user appears to be a supporter of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), as evidenced by their posts, profile pictures, and cover images on different social media accounts.
Anti-rape protests
In the second week of October 2024, protests erupted in Lahore, Pakistan, following allegations on social media that a student was subjected to sexual assault in the basement of a Punjab Group of Colleges (PGC) campus.
Amid the widespread outrage, angry students took to the streets to stage protests but baton-wielding police descended on them, deploying tear gas. Over two dozen were injured and multiple people were detained during the clashes. Vandalism and road blockages were also reported during the demonstrations.
A video report quoted college administration as labelling the incident “fake news”, whereas the protesting students spoke of the presence of ambulance and police on campus the night of the alleged rape and accused officials of hiding crucial information, silencing tactics, and suspicious behaviour.
“The students claim that the victim’s condition had deteriorated after the incident and she had been discreetly taken out of the college,” stated another report.
Punjab Education Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat visited the protest site to meet the students. While speaking to the media, he said the college “principal deleted the video evidence [and] turned off the [CCTV] cameras” and assured that the institute’s registration had been “suspended”.
In two posts on X, Hayat said swift action was taken and an accused individual — a guard — had been immediately arrested. An inquiry was underway and a comprehensive report would be submitted “within 48 hours”, he mentioned, adding that Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz “established a 7-member committee to conduct a thorough investigation on [the] PGC incident”.
On 14 October, the PGC issued a statement terming the accusations of rape as “false claims” and stating that “no such incident has been reported to the police or our campus administration, and no student, parent, or guardian has raised concerns”. There was a “lack of credible evidence supporting these allegations”, it added.
In yet another statement issued on 15 October, the PGC urged anyone with information about the identity of the victim or any other details to come forward, saying, “To date, no evidence or victim has been identified.”
Authorities later closed schools and universities for two days in a response to quell the tensions. Punjab Police claimed the allegations of rape were “a nefarious attempt […] to create a law and order situation and sabotage” the education process. In another post, it termed the accusations as “misinformation and propaganda”, adding that concrete evidence and a plaintiff were required for a case to be registered but no one had come forward to file a first information report (FIR).
The girl’s father and paternal uncle — both of whom wore surgical masks as they were presented in a video in the same post by Punjab Police — denied sexual assault.
The man identified as the girl’s father also stated that his daughter recently suffered a fall at home and was subsequently admitted to the hospital.
However, since the survivor’s name was not made public, Soch Fact Check could not independently verify whether the family shown in the video posted by Punjab Police was of the same girl or not.
Government’s denial, PTI blamed
The government flatly denied that any rape had occurred and urged calm. Maryam Nawaz, the Punjab chief minister and daughter of three-time former premier Nawaz Sharif, denied the allegations, saying they were “false”, “fabricated”, and “without any foundation”. She claimed that “a despicable and dangerous plan was devised”, linked to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit that took place in Islamabad, the federal capital.
Nawaz also accused the PTI for the protests, saying it was a “terrorist organisation” that had “orchestrated this conspiracy and used children, making their loyal journalists and vloggers issue statements”. She also asserted that there was no witness of the alleged sexual assault “because no such incident took place”.
Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari also blamed the PTI and its Insaf Student Wing, saying the party had a habit of launching “vile propaganda against women” and that it had encouraged students to incite unrest. There was video evidence as proof, she claimed, adding that its malicious planning defamed the “young girl and her family”.
Bokhari has noted that those who “deliberately spread a [sic] fake news and tried to disturb the law and order” would have to provide evidence for their claims to a committee formed by the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Cyber Crime Wing (CCW), which later conducted raids and detained some individuals. She also termed the allegations a “conspiracy”.
Speaking in a local court, Punjab’s advocate-general said no student had any evidence to support the claim. Separately, PGC Director Agha Tahir Ejaz issued a statement and labelled claims of the incident as “baseless”.
However, the students continued to protest, alleging that authorities were suppressing them in a bid to protect the powerful people they claimed were involved. The Progressive Students’ Collective (PSC) said it would “continue to expand these protests across the country” if the students’ demands were not met.
The opposition parties, particularly the PTI, accused Nawaz of politicising the matter because of her own administration’s shortcomings.
Mass arrests, cases filed
After Nawaz ordered action against those who allegedly spread “false information”, Punjab Police said in a 17 October 2024 press release that it had “lodged a first information report (FIR) under Section 20 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) 2016” — a controversial law that has been criticised by many groups.
Over 250 people have been arrested, according to media reports, which added that “at least 185 people were booked in a murder case” over the death of a security guard in Gujrat and upwards of 450 “named in cases filed over attacking and damaging PGC campuses in Gujrat’s Lalamusa and Kharian cities”. More than 2,400 were “listed as unknown participants in the demonstrations”, one story stated.
In one FIR filed by Principal Sadia Yousuf of PGC’s Gulberg campus over incitement to “violence” and “anarchy”, at least 38 “senior journalists, lawyers, [and] TikTokers” were accused of spreading the rape accusations. “We are also going to write to Facebook and Instagram to initiate further action against the account-holders involved in spreading false propaganda,” an FIA official was quoted as saying.
Moreover, Principal Yousuf brought several girls — students at her campus — to a press conference where one of them expressed regret and provided an apology for vlogging about the alleged rape incident. The security guard who had been arrested earlier was released, according to a report.
The seven-member committee formed by Nawaz and mentioned by Hayat, the education minister of Punjab, concluded in its report on 19 October that the incident was “fabricated” and “part of a broader disinformation campaign aimed at inciting unrest and damaging public order”.
Meanwhile, police in Punjab has claimed to have nabbed a woman who they said posed as the “mother of victim”, according to various media reports.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check browsed the comments under the post by @SaraMirGilgity and found a response by Punjab Police, which stated (archive) that “some miscreants” were wrongly linking the incident to the anti-rape protests against the PGC.
“According to the facts, this incident took place on 8 October 2024 in the jurisdiction of the Alipur Chattha police station in Wazirabad. The unidentified accused shot and killed the student while he was going from home to college. Police in Wazirabad took immediate action and registered a case,” it said, adding a copy of the FIR filed in that regard.
Alipur Chattha is a city located in the Wazirabad district in Gujranwala, a division of Pakistan’s Punjab province.
Bokhari, the information minister of Punjab, also cleared the police in a statement on X, saying they had “nothing to do” with the incident involving the murdered boy.
To further verify this, we conducted a Facebook search using the phrase, “گوجرانوالہ علی پور چٹھہ سیکنڈ ائیر طالبعلم کالج ہم عمر قتل یلماز اکرام موٹر سائیکل فائر [Gujranwala Alipur Chattha second-year student age-mate murder Yalmaz Ikram motorcycle fire].”
Our search led us to posts containing videos and images from 8 October about the boy who was killed in Alipur Chattha that can be found here, here, here, and here. Among these were reports by local journalists Nasir Katra, Sikander Malik, and Waqar Bajwa.
Katra’s Facebook post contains a news report by a channel called APT 101 NEWS, which broadcast five tickers in the same clip, listed as follows:
- “ایس سی او کانفرنس کا پاکستان میں انعقاد کامیاب خارجہ پالیسی کا عکاس ہے، محسن نقوی”
- “آئینی ترامیم کیلئے کوئی جلدی نہیں، وکلاء سے مکمل مشاورت کریں گے: گورنر پنجاب”
- “افسوس کی بات ہے چین کو یقین دہانی کے باوجود کراچی کا واقعہ ہوا، وزیر اعظم”
- “چین کا لبنان کو ہنگامی طبی سامان فراہم کرنے کا اعلان”
- “معاشی استحکام کیلئے کیے گئے اقدامات کے ثمرات ملنا شروع ہوگئے، وزیر خزانہ”
All of the tickers correspond to news reports published on 8 October, available here, here, here, here, and here, further confirming that the incident took place on the same date.
When Soch Fact Check contacted Katra and Bajwa, they confirmed that the video is unrelated to the anti-rape protests in Lahore and other major cities of Punjab and that the incident predated the same demonstrations. The latter added that the accused had not been caught and a motive not ascertained yet.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the video of the murdered boy has no connection to the anti-rape protests against the PGC. The claim that the teenager seen in the clip was killed by police is also false.
Virality
The post by @SaraMirGilgity has garnered over 438,900 views, as of writing time. In a few hours, it was published by multiple other accounts, including @noshigilani, @Abdulla_Alamadi, and @iimranrizkhan, which bagged more than 288,400, 255,600, and 537,200 views.
The claim also appeared on Facebook here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Soch Fact Check also found that multiple accounts leaning towards the PTI also posted the claim in Facebook posts, some of which can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The student in the video was shot dead in Alipur Chattha by a boy of the same age while on way to his college on 8 October 2024. The incident predates the reports of the alleged rape and is unrelated to the protests.
Background image in cover photo: Ali Rizvi
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