No Sharia council has ordered a revenge rape in Pakistan

The iVerify Pakistan team investigated this content and determined that it is false.

To reach this conclusion, iVerify Pakistan conducted a keyword search to corroborate the alleged incident.

Posts from users on social media platform X since August 26, 2025, were circulating on X claiming that a Sharia council in Pakistan ordered the revenge rape of a girl. However, the incident dates back to July 2017, and the order was issued by a local village council, not a Sharia council, since no such thing exists in Pakistan’s legal framework.

In Jan 2025, billionaire Elon Musk entered a contentious debate surrounding the term “Asian grooming gangs”, with his remarks sparking concerns of perpetuating harmful anti-Pakistani stereotypes. His remarks, seen as Islamophobic and targeting the British-Pakistani community, drew condemnation from Pakistan’s Foreign Office. The tech tycoon has continued to perpetuate similar claims since amid the issue of grooming gangs in the United Kingdom.

HOW IT STARTED

On Aug 26, a post on X from an account sharing Islamophobic and anti-Muslim content alleged that a Sharia council in Pakistan had ordered the revenge rape of a girl.

The caption said: “Pakistan: A woman was raped, and instead of arresting the rapist, the Sharia council decided that the rapist’s sister should be raped by the victim’s brother.”

The user further added: “The innocent teenage girl was publicly raped in front of 40 people in a practice called ‘revenge rape’ in Sharia law. It’s not racist to acknowledge that this culture is not compatible with the West!”

The post had also shared a screenshot of an article from British publication Daily Mail with the following headline: “Rapist is let off for sexually attacking a woman after agreeing to allow his sister to be raped by his victim’s brother in Pakistan”.

The post did not mention any other details or provide any further context of the alleged incident, such as its date and location where it occurred.

The post gained 37.2 million views and was reshared 17,000 times.

Among those who had reshared it was Musk, whose post gained 33.1m views and 38,000 reshares.

Another user also amplified the same claim.

METHODOLOGY

A fact-check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to its high virality and keen public interest in the matter.

Checking the Daily Mail report shared in the post showed that it was dated March 26, 2018, and its details did not match up with the post.

The article was about a separate incident in Punjab’s Toba Tek Singh, whereas the incident mentioned in the post with 40 public witnesses of the revenge rape was mentioned lower down in the news report in the background.

It said that the prior incident occurred in Multan in July 2017 when a village council ordered the revenge rape, which was subsequently allegedly carried out in front of the girl’s parents and 40 council members.

A further keyword search led to a Reuters news report dated July 27, 2017, titled “Pakistani council orders ‘revenge rape’ of 16-year-old girl”.

According to the report, in July 2017, a village council in Multan ordered the rape of a 16-year-old girl as “revenge” after her brother was accused of assaulting a 13-year-old neighbour. The punishment was carried out on July 17 after the girl was handed over.

Police subsequently arrested 25 members of the council, while the Supreme Court also sought a report on the case. Both victims and their mothers were later moved to a women’s protection centre.

The incident was also widely covered by international outlets, including The Guardian, BBC, and Al Jazeera.

Notably, none of the publications referred to the council as a Sharia council or mentioned the alleged role of Islamic law in the act. They identified the incident as an issue of local informal dispute resolution mechanisms that lack any legal standing and formal recognition.

The subsequent action and notice by authorities also signified that the act was not religiously sanctioned or condoned, but a crime that was proceeded against.

The same user had previously shared this claim in October 2024, while similar claims resurfaced from other users in January 2025.

Furthermore, despite the claim being reshared by Musk, his own AI assistant chatbot Grok said in the comments of the original post: “The incident described is real but from 2017, not recent. A tribal council in Pakistan ordered a ‘revenge rape’ as a custom, not under Sharia law. Police arrested 25 involved, and it’s widely condemned. The post misrepresents it as current Sharia practice. Sources: BBC, Reuters, NPR (2017 reports).”

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif also responded to the viral post, saying: “This has nothing to do with Sharia law, and there are no Sharia councils in Pakistan adjudicating such cases. This must have been a tribal arrangement in some remote part of our country. This is something abominable, not even remotely acceptable in our society.”

As said by the minister, nothing such as a Sharia council exists in Pakistan’s legal framework. The Council of Islamic Ideology is a constitutional body responsible for giving legal advice on Islamic issues to the government and Parliament, while the Federal Shariat Court is a constitutional religious court empowered to examine and determine whether the laws of the country comply with Sharia law.

FACT-CHECK TITLE: FALSE

The viral claim that a Sharia council in Pakistan ordered the revenge rape of a girl is false.

There is no such thing as a Sharia council in Pakistan and the incident dates back to July 2017, when an illegal order was issued by a local village council, which was subsequently prosecuted by the authorities instead of being sanctioned.