NUST Islamabad

NUST denies the alleged sexual assault and terms it as “Shameless” act to defame the university

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Another day, another trend! This time it targets the famous university of Pakistan — NUST (or National University of Science and Technology) in Islamabad. Social media, today, suddenly burst out with a claim that a sexual assault has allegedly occurred in the university’s premises.

Update: The university has officially denied that such an incident ever happened in the institution. Continue after the break.

A handle on Twitter, whose profile suggests it to be a female journalist belonging to Herald by Dawn newspaper, came up and tweeted that she has heard “about a sexual assault of a student on the premises of a campus at one of the biggest universities in Islamabad.”

She also claimed that the administration has been silencing the students who were demanding investigation and safety on campus. According to her, the admin is also preventing the students to discuss the matter anywhere or they will be expelled.

The tweet got responses from several others in the thread who also belong to the same or sibling-like publishers. Within five minutes, a guy with a bit heavy profile, also having belonged to the same publication previously, pushes her to share details while keeping the anonymity of the unknown victim.

While the thread kept growing, other people also started their own threads with a similar text. Claiming about the same as they also might have heard it. It’s not yet clear if they are just reading each other and rebroadcasting or they heard the same thing from their own sources.

One user also added that the students of the said university are advised not to disclose the name of the institution as they have signed the non-defamatory clause.

Unlike the above users who only referred to a “reputable institution”, some confidently started naming the said institution. Yet with no evidence, one user quoted the original tweet and said that the incident happened in NUST.

He, with the abusive language, also included the same fact that the university is allegedly trying to dismiss the issue.

While taking the notes for writing about it, first I noticed the original poster and her thread involved users belonging to a few famous publications. Then once again I noticed a similar thing about other users who started naming the institutions.

Notice the above user’s profile name with a rainbow icon? The following user with a similar icon in her profile name didn’t add any note but was indeed confident to say the institution’s name.

The Denial of the University

The administration of the university didn’t want to stay quiet on the matter and came up instantly with a straight denial.

In the four-tweets long thread, the administration officially denied such an incident and referred the accusations to as fabricated. It said that propagating false news is a shameful and horrendous act.

Continuing in the next tweet, it said that recent tweets about the alleged rape of a student are not more than an attempt to defame the university.

The official handle of the university continued further to tell that the thorough investigation about the matter has been carried out, and it didn’t find any traces of such an incident that has allegedly taken place as per some recent tweets.