Fact-check: Police complaint filed against PTI leaders on orders of AC Rawalpindi?

Posts on the microblogging platform X purport to show a police complaint filed by the assistant commissioner in the garrison city of Rawalpindi against politicians belonging to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Online users allege the police complaint was lodged just a day after a senior bureaucrat from the city resigned claiming he was under “pressure” to manipulate election results. However, the bureaucrat later retracted his statement and apologised for leveling the allegations.

The claim is false. No such police complaint has been filed in any police station in Rawalpindi Cantt.

Claim

An X, formerly Twitter, user shared a purported hand-written first information report on the platform, with the following claim:

“After the revelation and press conference by the commissioner Rawalpindi, a first information report (FIR) should have been filed against the chief election commissioner and the chief justice [of Pakistan] as well as an investigation conducted, but instead the assistant commissioner of Rawalpindi Cantt has filed an FIR against PTI's Hammad Azhar, Mian Aslam Iqbal and Zartaj Gul.”

The post has been viewed over 500,000 times and reposted over 4,000 times, to date.

Similar claims took off on Facebook here and here.

Fact

All five police station house officers (SHOs) in the Rawalpindi’s Cantonment area confirm to Geo Fact Check that they have, to date, not received any application from the assistant commissioner for registering a police complaint against PTI’s Hammad Azhar, Mian Aslam Iqbal and Zartaj Gul.

Qandeel Fatima Memon, the assistant commissioner of Rawalpindi Cantt, said over the phone that official letters issued by her carry her entire name, signature and a stamp. She explained that the alleged application circulating online carries none of the above.

“It is fake,” Memon said, “Neither have I written any such application nor has any police station in the area received any such application from me.”

She also rubbished the online claims through her X account.

Geo Fact Check then reached out to the SHOs at five police stations in Rawalpindi's Cantt area.

It spoke to Nasir Mumtaz, at the Naseerabad police station, Tariq Mehmood at the R.A. Bazaar police station, Hasnain Shah at the Cantt police station, Raja Iftikhar Ahmad at the Race Course police station and Zahid Zahoor at the Westridge police station.

All five SHOs told Geo Fact Check they have not received any application from the assistant commissioner of Rawalpindi Cantt to register a police case against the above-named PTI leaders.

With additional reporting by Saman Amjad.

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