On the night of October 12, an Instagram user named @Ahsenetix shared a video with his over 3,000 followers, claiming, "I have just received the news that at Punjab College Campus 10 [in Lahore], the daughter of this nation was raped."
The narrator alleged that a student, tricked into staying after hours, was assaulted by a security guard and a van driver in the college's basement. He then accused the principal of silencing students with threats of suspension.
"Don't you [students] have any self-respect?" he asked, urging viewers to spread the message on TikTok and other social platforms.
Research by Media Matters for Democracy, an Islamabad-based media development organisation, confirmed to Geo News that @Ahsenetix was the first account to share an audio containing the rape allegations against the Punjab Group of Colleges. The claims soon spread to other Instagram accounts, such as @Newdity.pk and Newspaper.pk, according to The Current, a Lahore-based independent news outlet. And later on WhatsApp and other online platforms.
All three Instagram accounts have since been deleted.
As the allegations gained momentum, student protests broke out at the Punjab Group of Colleges and other campuses across the province. Soon after, Punjab’s Minister for School Education Rana Sikander Hayat visited the college on October 14. But his remarks only escalated tensions.
“I want to congratulate these girls for standing up for their sister,” the minister told the media as young students cheered him on.
When a reporter informed him that the police had found no evidence to support the allegations, Hayat refuted the claim. “No, that’s not true,” he responded. "The principal deleted the video evidence and shut off the cameras. There are videos and audio from these students. We must ensure our daughters are safe in colleges."
He then thundered, "We will hang [the perpetrators] upside down! We will punish them!"
However, just two days later, Punjab's chief minister declared the rape allegations “false,” blaming the uproar on political rivals. A government inquiry, seen by Geo News, stated that the accusations were “based on hearsay” and that the accused security guard had been on leave during the alleged crime, amongst other things.
Are there any witnesses?
Nearly two weeks after the accusation first surfaced on social media, no direct witnesses have emerged, and the identity of the alleged rape survivor also remains unknown.
One name that circulated online was Izza, a 19-year-old student at the college. Her photos were shared with claims that she was the survivor. However, her father, Inayat Rasool, told Geo News that his daughter had not been to the college on October 12. "On October 2, she fell at home, and we kept her home afterwards,” Rasool said. He also provided a medical report dated October 3, which recorded a spinal injury, but no other trauma.
"I didn’t know anything about this until the police contacted me, saying my daughter’s name was circulating on social media," Rasool said. "I don’t know if something like this happened [to someone else], but I know my daughter was at home on those days."
Another student who claimed to have seen a video, during a protest, showing a student being loaded onto an ambulance also later denied she had any proof that the incident had occurred.
“My daughter just saw a video [of an ambulance]; she has no other evidence [of the alleged crime],” the student’s mother told Geo News, asking to not name her daughter, “In fact, when she went to college that day [October 12], she didn’t hear any rumours of a rape. It was only after returning home that she saw the allegations circulating on social media.”
Mahnoor Butt, also a student at the college, who was being cited by social media as a potential witness had a similar story.
On October 14, Butt stated in a video that went viral on social media that several students at her college had heard the rape survivor's screams and had seen her being taken away by a Rescue 1122 ambulance. However, during a press conference on October 16, Butt while seated next to Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz told the media that she was not even enrolled at the same campus where the alleged incident took place.
“I clearly said in the video that students heard screams, not that I did,” Butt told reporters. Butt’s family have refused to talk to Geo News.
Separately, Farooq Ahmed, the public relations officer for Rescue 1122, also confirmed to Geo News that none of the organisation’s ambulances had visited the college on the day of the alleged incident.
What about the CCTV footage?
One major point of contention has been the CCTV footage from the college basement, where the alleged crime took place.
Geo News reached out to the Punjab police to be shown the footage. Initially, Deputy Inspector General Muhammad Faisal Kamran agreed to show Geo News a copy of the footage, but when the team arrived at his office, he refused.
The police official later stated that the video had been sent to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency to verify whether it had been tampered with.
When Geo News contacted Dr Muhammad Amjad, the Punjab Forensic Science Agency’s director general, he declined to share any information, citing the information as “confidential”.
While on October 28, Tasswar Iqbal, the superintendent of police operations in Lahore, told Geo News that the police were expecting two reports from the Punjab Forensic Science Agency.
“We received one of the reports last week, which confirmed that the footage was not edited,” he said over the phone, adding that the report stated the footage was original and untampered. Geo News has not seen the report.
“We have submitted this [first] report to the Lahore High Court. The second report will provide a more detailed forensic analysis of the footage, for which the Agency has requested an additional 20 days for examination,” he added.
Iqbal further stated that the CCTV footage, spanning October 9-14, totals around 15 terabytes.
Separately, college students have filed a petition with the Lahore High Court, demanding a high-level inquiry into the matter.
