Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz on Wednesday dismissed “rumours spread on social media” related to the alleged on-campus rape of a student in Lahore, terming it a “fabricated story”.

Last week, news related to the alleged rape of the student went viral on social media, prompting the police to arrest a security guard at the college who was allegedly involved in the incident.

Enraged by the alleged incident, students mobilised on social media and staged protests outside different colleges in the city. During one of the protests, clashes broke out between the protesters and the security team of a college. Later on, police and students confronted each other, resulting in a total of 28 casualties.

Police said that while the arrested security guard was being interrogated, the victim could not be identified or located. Nobody from her family came forward to register a first information report (FIR), the police said, adding that CCTV footage of the college in question, together with hospital records had been checked but no cues could be found.

Meanwhile, a video featuring a girl began going viral on social media, with users claiming that she was the alleged rape victim. Taking notice of the viral video, Lahore’s Defence A police station registered an FIR related to the case, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com.

According to the FIR, when approached by the police, the parents of the girl in the viral video categorically denied any incident of rape, saying that their daughter had been hospitalised from October 2 to October 11 following an injury from a fall at home. The parents of the girl maintained that making their daughter’s video go viral was a deliberate attempt to malign her reputation.

Addressing the issue in a press conference in Lahore today, the chief minister said that an issue was made out of an incident that “never existed in the first place.”

“The alleged rape incident was a fabricated story with no basis in reality,” she said today.

Maryam said that a “plan was hatched” to mislead and instigate students through social media deliberately and accused the PTI of fueling the rumours and using them to its advantage.

“The girl [in the viral video] is not a rape victim, but a victim of bad politics and conspiracy,” she said.

Speaking about the student-led demonstration in the city against the alleged rape incident, she said that “some of the protesters were not even students. Our opposition party [PTI] launched them.”

“Whoever was behind this, I will not spare them. Journalists and social media users, who provoked and incited the students, and disrespected the girl and her family, we have found their accounts,” she said. “There will be a crackdown against them.”

“The problem is PTI, social media is not the problem. They use social media as it does not show their faces.”

She alleged that “PTI-paid journalists” were responsible for instigating and inciting students to mutiny. “Will be unsparing to anyone who was involved behind this.”

More to follow