Giving a hypothetical communal angle to the incident, X handle, Baba Banaras, infamous for peddling misinformation, shared the video (trigger warning: visuals of violence) and wrote, “An incident has come to light from Pakistan which has shaken the entire world. In Pakistan’s Punjab province, Education Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat in the Maryam Nawaz government stripped a girl and assaulted her in front of a camera. The crime of that girl and her partner was that they had participated in the protest against the assault of a girl at Lahore University. Now just imagine that when a Pakistani minister can openly do this to a Muslim woman in front of the camera, then what will the people of Pakistan do with the Hindus?” (Archive)

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The incident occurred in 2021. The man assaulting the couple is Usman Mirza, not Pakistan’s Punjab education minister, Rana Sikandar Hayat.

We conducted a reverse image search of the video’s keyframes and found the same visuals featured in video reports by Pakistani news outlets ARY News and BOl News. Both reports identified the main accused as Usman Mizra.

Further, we ran a keyword search and came across a report by The Tribune published on March 25, 2022, titled ‘Usman Mirza, four others get life imprisonment.’ The report carried the image of Usman Mirza, and he was sentenced after ‘a video of the culprits harassing a couple at gunpoint went viral on social media in July 2021.’

According to the report, then PM Imran Khan, upon taking note of the case, instructed the Islamabad IG to ensure the accused received the harshest possible punishment. The Islamabad High Court directed the trial court to conclude the trial within the first two months, later extending it by an additional three months. Usman Mirza, along with Idris Qayyum Butt, Mohib Khan Bangash, Hafiz Ataur Rehman and Farhan Shaheen were subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.

 

In an article dated March 25, 2022, Dawn reported that a sessions court in Islamabad sentenced Usman Mirza to life imprisonment for holding a couple at gunpoint, forcing them to strip, assaulting them and filming the ordeal. The article also noted that Mirza’s accomplices and co-accused—Hafiz Ataur Rehman, Adaras Qayyum Butt, Mohib Bangash and Farhan Shaheen—were also sentenced to life in prison, while two other men, Umar Bilal and Rehan Hassan Mughal, were acquitted.

Lastly, we searched for reports accusing Rana Sikandar Hayat of sexual assault but found no such claims in the Pakistani media. Hence, we conclude that the video is from 2021 and does not show the Punjab education minister sexually assaulting a woman on video. The claim is false.

(This story was originally published by newsmeter.in, and republished by english.varthabharati.in as part of the Shakti Collective)