Islamabad, Oct 17
Violent protests by students continue to spread across Pakistan's Punjab province after reports of alleged rape of a private college student in Lahore went viral on social media.
On Thursday, angry students of different colleges in Rawalpindi took to the streets and blocked main highways, protesting against the alleged rape of a Lahore college student by a security guard. Police authorities have arrested at least 150 violent protesters while using tear gas to disperse the students.
Major protests and rallies are being taken out in various parts of the Punjab province for the past four days with students and their representational bodies slamming the provincial government of Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif for trying to cover up the whole incident and claiming that it never occurred.
As per the latest reports, at least one student protestor has lost his life while over 28 have been reportedly injured due to clashes with the security guards of the college and police.
"The college management has deliberately deleted the CCTV footage to hide the incident. The provincial government is trying to term the whole incident as fake. We will not tolerate this at any cost. The respect and dignity of female students is supreme to us all and there is zero tolerance against those who try to hide such incidents and call them fake," said one protestor in Rawalpindi.
On the other hand, the provincial government has declared that reports about alleged rape of a college girl in Lahore by its guard are fake and has instead blamed opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) for spreading fake news on social media.
"The incident is fake. The girl claimed to have been raped while her parents have confirmed that nothing like this ever happened. We have not deleted any CCTV footage as being claimed because there is nothing to delete or hide. The security guard who is being blamed for the rape was on leave in Sargodha at the time. He was arrested from Sargodha. The whole incident seems to have been falsely propagated on social media," said Afgha Tahir, Director of Punjab Group of Colleges (PGC).
Chief Minister Punjab Maryam Nawaz Sharif maintains that the whole episode is based on a fake news spread on social media with political motives.
"I met the girl whose name was circulated as the rape victim and also her parents. She has confirmed that she was not raped. This whole incident is part of a political propaganda and people have stooped down to the lowest level to make such false and astonishing claims and spread them on social media to spread chaos," said CM Punjab Maryam Nawaz Sharif.
Punjab province remains engulfed in violent protests with students of public and private institutions resorting to ransacking and torching of different college campuses.
Till now, over a thousand students and protestors have been named in different cases over attacking and damaging PGC campuses across the Punjab province.