Claim: A video is being circulated with the claim that it shows an elderly woman, Naseem, protesting outside the Lahore Press Club following the disappearance of her daughter, who has been missing for four days.
Fact: The clip does show Naseem but it is not recent. The video is from January 2021; it is being reshared on social media as a fresh incident.
On 29 January 2022, a video surfaced on social media showing an elderly woman sitting in the middle of a busy road crying for help. She can be seen holding photos of a woman in her hand with newspaper cuttings on the ground in front of her.
The video, which quickly received 1,500 views, was posted by Facebook user ‘Hammad Arshad’ with the following caption:
“لاہور پریس کلب کےباہرنسیم اخترنامی بزرگ خاتون اپنی بیٹی کے لاپتہ ہونے پر سراپا احتجاج بزرگ خاتون ہاتھ میں اپنی بیٹی کی تصاویر لیےبیٹی کی بازیابی کی اپیل کرتی رہی,میری بیٹی چار دن سے لاپتی ہے،میری عمران نیازی سے اپیل ہے کہ میری بچی کو ڈھونڈنے میں میری مدد کی جائے،نسیم اختر”
[An elderly woman named Naseem Akhtar protested outside Lahore Press Club over the disappearance of her daughter. The elderly woman held a picture of her daughter in her hand and kept appealing for her recovery. ‘My daughter has been missing for four days; I appeal to Imran Niazi to help me find my daughter,’ said Naseem Akhtar.]
The video was shared on Facebook by multiple people and pages, including here, here, here, here and here, as well on groups here, here and here, generating thousands of views. The clip was also shared many times on Twitter including by journalist Saleem Safi, who has a verified Twitter account with 2.7 million followers.
Fact or Fiction?
The video, in fact, dates back to 2 January 2021 when the elderly woman staged a protest in Lahore.
The incident was reported on by some media outlets at the time and the video was also shared by a handful of Facebook pages. A video published 2 January 2021 on Facebook by news organisation Abbtakk and titled, “لاہور پریس کلب کے باہر نسیم اختر نامی خاتون کا بیٹی کے لاپتہ ہونے پر احتجاج [Woman named Naseem Akhtar protests outside Lahore Press Club against her daughter’s disappearance]” mentions the incident.
Abbtakk’s video report states that the name of the elderly woman on the street is Naseem Akhtar who fainted while protesting outside the Lahore Press Club four days after the disappearance of her daughter. Her daughter, Hira Malik, is a theatre actress who previously performed at Sitara Theater, Lahore. A reporter can be heard saying in the clip that Naseem told him that the police did not cooperate with her to find her daughter.
Abbtakk also posted the video on its verified Twitter account on 2 January 2021.
A report published on the same date by Daily Jang, titled, “اسٹیج ڈانسر کی گمشدگی پر بزرگ والدہ کا احتجاج [Elderly mother protests against stage dancer’s disappearance]” also mentioned the incident and stated that Akhtar believed her daughter had been kidnapped by unidentified men in Lahore
The incident was also reported on by Balochistan-based Pasni News at the time.
Punjab Police also confirmed that the video in question is from 2021, while responding to journalist Saleem Safi’s tweet about the incident.
“یہ ایک سال پرانی ویڈیو ہے جس کا لنک یو ٹیوب پر موجود ہے۔ تاہم مزید معلومات بھی چیک کی جا رہی ہیں [This is a year-old video, the link of which is available on YouTube however further details are being checked],” Punjab Police said in a tweet.
Virality:
According to a CrowdTangle analysis, over the past 30 days, the search term “لاہور پریس کلب نسیم اختر [Lahore Press Club Naseem Akhtar]” featured in at least 69 Facebook posts that received close to 1,313 interactions.
Facebook user Hammad Arshad’s post has received 103 likes and 1,400 shares.
Facebook page Pakistan Crime Reports etc’s post garnered 9,300 views, 228 likes and 96 shares. It is also performing 1.79x better than other similar posts.
YouTube Facebook Adbreak Share’s post with 47 likes and 94 shares is performing four times better than other similar posts in groups.
Meanwhile, the English search term “elderly woman Lahore” has received 222 interactions across eight posts in the same period.
The Current’s post appeared as a result under the aforementioned search term. The news website carried the story on the incident with a misleading headline, “Elderly woman sits in oncoming traffic to protest the disappearance of her daughter.” While the website did mention in the body of their article that the Punjab Police said the video in question is one year old.
Soch Fact Check also conducted a Google Search and found that various websites including Parhlo Urdu and MM News, among others, reported on the incident as well.
Conclusion: The video in question does depict an elderly woman staging a protest in Lahore, but it is from 2021 not from 2022.