Claim: Peshawar’s Islamia College University lecturer Dr Bashir Ahmad was killed over a blasphemy allegation. Fact: The claim is false, as confirmed by Islamia College University’s provost and a journalist from Peshawar. On 19 February 2023, Twitter account @DayWithNews posted a tweet (archive) claiming that Dr Bashir Ahmad, a lecturer at the Department of English […]
Claim: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf failed to build a forensic laboratory for DNA testing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Fact: The Forensic Science Lab in KP became functional on 6 February 2018, although the lab was established three years before then to conduct DNA profiling. Fact or Fiction? On 3 February 2023, Twitter user Faizan Khan claimed that […]
Claim: The Pink Peoples Bus Service in Karachi, Sindh, is the first women-only bus service in Pakistan. Fact: The Pink Bus Service in Sindh is the first women-only bus service in the province, but not the country. The women-only buses were launched in Lahore in 2012, in Peshawar in April 2019 and in Gilgit-Baltistan in […]
Claim: A lecturer at the Islamia College University (ICU) in Peshawar, who was shot dead on 19 February 2023, was involved in drug peddling. Fact: The lecturer, Dr Bashir Ahmad, was acquitted of all charges in a case of drug peddling that was brought against him in 2017. He was formally cleared in 2019, according […]
Claim: A Geo News post, which includes an image of dismembered ears among shorn hair, claims that a barber cut off the ears of a man who criticised Imran Khan. Fact: No such incident took place and the news card is doctored. Soch Fact Check spoke to multiple Geo News employees, who asserted that the […]
Claim: A picture shows rescue authorities, and others, in the aftermath of a blast on 30 January 2023 in the Police Lines neighbourhood of Peshawar, Pakistan. Yellow police tape is visible in the background of the scene of the bombing that left more than 30 dead. Fact: The image is, in fact, from another bombing […]
Claim: A social media video shows Baloch students chanting and demanding freedom from Pakistan. Fact: The claim is false. The video is from the University of Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where students protested against the ban on women’s education in Afghanistan. On 10 January 2023, a Twitter account posted a video with the caption, “We demand […]
Claim: Awami National Party’s (ANP) leader Ghulam Ahmad Bilour said it’s impossible to defeat Imran Khan and has graciously accepted his loss in the NA-31 Peshawar by-election. Fact: Bilour did not issue any such statement. In fact, he refused to accept the by-election result and accused the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government of “massive rigging”. Fact or […]
Claim: A viral image shows a young girl who drowned in Balochistan during the recent monsoon flooding in Pakistan. Fact: The viral image is of a girl who drowned in River Kabul, Peshawar and was found by rescue services near Attock. On 27 July 2022, an image of an infant’s dead body went viral on […]
Claim: A video doing the rounds on social media shows a glimpse of a BRT Peshawar Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) station flooded following a recent bout of heavy rain in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Pakistan. Fact: The video in question is actually from September 2020 and shows a subway in New York flooded following Hurricane Ida. […]
Claim: Hindus in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province are forced to wear topis — caps typically worn by Muslim men during prayers — when they enter the Guru Gorakhnath temple near Peshawar, the only remaining Shiva temple in the country. Fact: There is no truth to the claim. The Hindu community is free to worship […]