{"id":91611,"date":"2024-10-29T10:12:46","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T10:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/?p=91611"},"modified":"2024-10-29T10:12:46","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T10:12:46","slug":"what-we-know-so-far-about-punjab-college-rape-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2024\/91611\/","title":{"rendered":"What we know so far about Punjab college rape allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Pakistan(National Times)- On the night of October 12, an Instagram user named @Ahsenetix shared a video with his over 3,000 followers, claiming, &#8220;I have just received the news that at Punjab College Campus 10 [in Lahore], the daughter of this nation was raped.&#8221; The narrator alleged that a student, tricked into staying after hours, was assaulted by a security guard and a van driver in the college&#8217;s basement. He then accused the principal of silencing students with threats of suspension. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you [students] have any self-respect?&#8221; 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\u00a0<em>Geo News\u00a0<\/em>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\u2019s Minister for School Education Rana Sikander Hayat visited the college on October 14.\u00a0But his remarks only escalated tensions. \u201cI want to congratulate these girls for standing up for their sister,\u201d 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. \u201cNo, that\u2019s not true,\u201d he responded. &#8220;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.&#8221; He\u00a0then thundered, &#8220;We will hang [the perpetrators] upside down! We will punish them!&#8221; However, just two days later, Punjab&#8217;s chief minister declared the rape allegations \u201cfalse,\u201d blaming the uproar on political rivals.\u00a0A government inquiry, seen by\u00a0<em>Geo News<\/em>, stated that the accusations were \u201cbased on hearsay\u201d and that the accused security guard had been on leave during the alleged crime, amongst other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Are there any witnesses?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>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\u00a0<em>Geo News\u00a0<\/em>that his daughter had not been to the college on October 12. &#8220;On October 2, she fell at home, and we kept her home afterwards,\u201d Rasool said. He also provided a medical report dated October 3, which recorded a spinal injury, but no other trauma. &#8220;I didn\u2019t know anything about this until the police contacted me, saying my daughter\u2019s name was circulating on social media,&#8221; Rasool said. &#8220;I don\u2019t know if something like this happened [to someone else], but I know my daughter was at home on those days.&#8221; Another student who\u00a0claimed to have seen a video,\u00a0during a protest,\u00a0showing a student being loaded onto an ambulance\u00a0also later denied she had any proof that the incident had occurred. \u201cMy daughter just saw\u00a0a video [of an ambulance]; she has no other evidence [of the alleged crime],\u201d the student\u2019s mother told\u00a0<em>Geo News<\/em>, asking to not name her daughter,\u00a0\u201cIn fact, when she went to college that day [October 12],\u00a0she\u00a0didn\u2019t hear\u00a0any rumours of a rape. It was only after returning home that she saw the allegations circulating on social media.\u201d 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,\u00a0Butt stated in a video that went viral on social media that\u00a0several students\u00a0at her college\u00a0had heard the rape survivor&#8217;s screams and had seen her being taken away by a Rescue 1122 ambulance. However, during a press conference on October 16, Butt\u00a0while seated next to Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz told the media that she\u00a0was not even enrolled at the same campus where the alleged incident took place. \u201cI clearly said\u00a0in the video that students heard screams, not that I did,\u201d Butt told reporters.\u00a0Butt\u2019s family have refused to talk to\u00a0<em>Geo News<\/em>. Separately,\u00a0Farooq Ahmed, the public relations officer for Rescue 1122,\u00a0also\u00a0confirmed to\u00a0<em>Geo News\u00a0<\/em>that none of the organisation\u2019s ambulances had visited the college on the day of the alleged incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What about the CCTV footage?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>One major point of contention has been the CCTV footage from the college basement, where the alleged crime took place. <em>Geo News\u00a0<\/em>reached out to the Punjab police to be shown the footage. Initially, Deputy Inspector General Muhammad Faisal Kamran agreed to show\u00a0<em>Geo News\u00a0<\/em>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\u00a0<em>Geo News\u00a0<\/em>contacted Dr Muhammad Amjad, the Punjab Forensic Science Agency\u2019s director general, he declined to share any information, citing the information as \u201cconfidential\u201d. While on October 28, Tasswar Iqbal, the superintendent of police operations in Lahore, told\u00a0<em>Geo News\u00a0<\/em>that the police were expecting two reports from the Punjab Forensic Science Agency. \u201cWe received one of the reports last week, which confirmed that the footage was not edited,\u201d he said over the phone, adding that the report stated the footage was original and untampered.\u00a0<em>Geo News\u00a0<\/em>has not seen the report.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWe 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,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pakistan(National Times)- On the night of October 12, an Instagram user named @Ahsenetix shared a video with his over 3,000 followers, claiming, &#8220;I have just received the news that at Punjab College Campus 10 [in Lahore], the daughter of this nation was raped.&#8221; The narrator alleged that a student, tricked into staying after hours, was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","entry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What we know so far about Punjab college rape allegations - Nation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2024\/91611\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What we know so far about Punjab college rape allegations - Nation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pakistan(National Times)- On the night of October 12, an Instagram user named @Ahsenetix shared a video with his over 3,000 followers, claiming, &#8220;I have just received the news that at Punjab College Campus 10 [in Lahore], the daughter of this nation was raped.&#8221; 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