Claim: A video shows Punjab’s Education Minister Rana Sikander Hayat assaulting a couple following the alleged incident of a student’s sexual assault at a private college in Lahore.
Fact: The claim is false as the video does not show Rana Sikander Hayat. The individual in the video can be identified as Usman Mirza, who assaulted a couple at gunpoint on 6 July 2021 in Islamabad. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022.
[Content warning: This fact-check contains mention of sexual assault.]
On 17 October 2024, an Indian account on X (formerly Twitter) by the name Jitendra Partap Singh posted a video with a Hindi language caption. When translated into English, it said, “An incident has come to light from Pakistan which has shaken the whole world. In Pakistan’s Punjab province, Education Minister in the Maryam Nawaz government, Rana Sikandar Hayat, went to a couple’s house and stripped a girl and raped her in front of the camera.”
The video and similar claims were made after allegations of a student’s sexual assault in Lahore started emerging on social media.
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.
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.
Authorities later closed schools and universities for two days 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 who 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 people to remain 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.
The Chief Minister 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”.
The opposition parties, particularly the PTI, accused Maryam Nawaz of politicising the matter because of her own administration’s shortcomings.
Soch Fact Check has not been able to verify if this incident did take place or not.
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 conducted a reverse image search on the video’s keyframes and found a Facebook video published on 10 July 2021 with the caption “Usman Mirza Scandel”. In the video, disturbing visuals show a group of men, with one man taking the lead, assaulting a couple, same as that of the viral video. Due to privacy concerns and triggering visuals, Soch Fact Check is not adding link to the post.
Another search showed a news report by ARY News published on 30 September 2021. The report features similar visuals and is titled “Usman Mirza and 7 others indicted for torturing a couple in Islamabad.” However, the faces of the people were blurred to protect the identities of the victims. But the accused’s face can be seen in the video. After taking a closer look at the clip, we determined that the man in the video is not the education minister of Punjab Rana Sikander Hayat, but Usman Mirza whose video of assaulting a couple went viral in 2021.
For further investigation, Soch Fact Check conducted a keyword search on Google and the results led to multiple news reports from July 2021. According to Dawn, the incident was reported in the E-11/2 sector of Islamabad where a couple was assaulted by a group of men. The article quoted the FIR and stated that “a video went viral on social media. In the video, five to six men can be seen keeping the victims in custody under gunpoint. The accused also stripped the man and the woman naked while threatening them”. The main accused was identified as Usman Mirza and the news was widely shared on social media after which all of them were arrested by Islamabad police, the report added.
After seven months of hearings with victims retracting their statements in the middle, an Islamabad session court sentenced five men, including Mirza, to life imprisonment on 25 March 2022. Each of the accused were additionally fined Rs200,000. However, the other two accused, Umar Bilal Marwat and Rehan Hussain, were acquitted.
IFCN verified signatory Factly also fact-checked the same video after it went viral in India. with the claim that it shows Rana Sikander Hayat, earlier in October 2024.
Therefore, it is clear that the man in the video is not Punjab’s Education Minister Rana Sikander Hayat, and it is not related to the alleged incident of sexual assault at a college campus in Lahore.
Virality
The video with the false claim was widely shared in India and on X, receiving 1.9 million views, 10,000 likes and 5,700 reposts.
It was also shared on Facebook.
Soch Fact Check is not sharing the link to the post as the video was recorded without the consent of the victims, and includes visuals that can be triggering for readers.
Conclusion: A video does not show a couple being assaulted by Punjab’s Education Minister Rana Sikander Hayat. The video is from 2021 and shows a couple being assaulted in Islamabad by accused Usman Mirza who was later sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022.
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Background image in cover photo: Assiciated Press
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