Claim: A placard at Aurat March 2026 carried a sexually explicit message in the context of menstruation.
Fact: The placard is doctored. The original poster, which was first raised in 2021 at Aurat March Multan, is a comment on the society’s double standards towards men and women who smoke.
On 19 May 2026, a picture allegedly from the Aurat March was posted by an anonymous participant in a Facebook group called “Gangs of Dajjali Aurat 2.0 گینگز آف دجالی عورت”.
The image features a woman holding a placard with the following text:
“ماہواری ہے پیارے ضد نہ کر آگے نہیں پیچھے کر”
The text, translated to English, is a sexually explicit message to a “beloved” in the context of menstruation.
What is the Aurat March?
Organised by local feminist collectives and activists since May 2018, the Aurat March is an annual protest held in multiple Pakistani cities, drawing thousands of people to rally for the bodily, democratic, economic, and social rights of women and gender diverse people, as well as to call out patriarchal norms.
It is a grassroots, crowdfunded effort but frequently faces backlash and conspiracy theories, many of which have been debunked in the past by Soch Fact Check.
Aurat March is a leaderless movement, not a registered organisation that receives any formal funding. Its organisers and supporters have also consistently rejected claims of foreign funding, terming them as baseless and false.
In Islamabad this year, police held dozens of Aurat March activists and participants before they could even start a protest on International Women’s Day. Among them were three reporters as well, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). While they were released, they accused the administration for “manhandling and threatening them and forcing them to sign unreasonable affidavits”.
No public rally was held in Lahore or Multan on International Women’s Day. However, organisers for the former announced “a conscious decision to take the year to practice politics differently, to respond to the pressing challenges we’re facing–imperialist wars, fascism, and rising inequality”.
Aurat March Multan organisers marked the day by “conducting a seminar with Rural and Home-based women workers”.
In Karachi, however, the protest was organised at Sea View on 10 May to commemorate Mother’s Day — compared to how it is usually held on 8 March in line with International Women’s Day — with “Good Girls” as its theme, focusing on “issues such as domestic violence, marital rape, and the societal expectations imposed on women”.
It was held after the Sindh government issued a no-objection certificate (NOC) after days of no response, listing more than two dozen conditions that attempted to enforce stringent rules about participants’ clothing, slogans and chants, and which causes to support.
Aurat March organisers were detained briefly — and released later — on 5 May when they tried to hold a press conference to call out the Sindh government for not issuing an NOC initially. They also rejected “speculation” that they had signed on to the administration’s conditional permission.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the image but only found it being rehashed in posts on different social media platforms. However, one of them was slightly clearer due to which we could ascertain that the text said “2021” and “Multan”.
Therefore, we decided to reach out to Laiba Zainab, one of the organisers of Aurat March Multan who confirmed that the image was doctored.
“This is obviously edited,” she said, providing a link to the original photo that she uploaded on her Facebook profile in March 2021.
The placard in the original one reads as follows:
“TOHADI CIGRT CIGRIT – SADI CIGRET بیغیرتی”
The message highlights double standards in people’s reactions towards men and women smoking cigarettes.
Comparison visual of the doctored photo (left) and the original photo (right)
The same poster was also used in a 1 July 2025 Facebook post by Aurat March Multan, which said it “strongly condemns all these social attitudes and mindsets, which create an atmosphere of contempt, ridicule and fear for working women in Pakistan, especially unmarried, widowed or divorced women”.
The movement added, “These women are also a respectable and courageous part of our society, and they have every right to live an independent life on the basis of their own abilities and hard work. … No person or tradition has the right to tell an adult woman what is right or wrong for her.”
Soch Fact Check also decided to analyse the photo using online tools to assess its authenticity. We used two tools — Forensically and FotoForensics, both of which are available online for free — to ascertain potential digital errors. Of these, the former has been certified by the RAND Corporation, an American nonprofit international policy think tank and consulting firm.
To strengthen the findings, we compared the results with the original one shared by Laiba Zainab.
A comparison visual showing forensic analysis — using Forensically and FotoForensics — of the viral picture (left) and the authentic photo posted by Laiba Zainab (right). The first row is the content we submitted, the second depicts results from FotoForensics, and the third and fourth are noise and error level analyses from Forensically
Results from FotoForensics can be accessed here and here for the viral image and the original one from 2021, respectively.
According to FotoForensics, the pixels and contrast in the viral image are dull and low, respectively, whereas those in the original are clear and vibrant. The same is the case in an error level analysis (ELA) by Forensically.
Moreover, a noise analysis by Forensically shows the pixels are scattered and muted.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the viral picture is doctored.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the doctored image circulating online on Facebook and Instagram.
On X (formerly Twitter), it gained more than 22,400 views across two posts.
Conclusion: The placard is doctored. The original poster is from the 2021 Aurat March held in Multan and protests against society’s double standards towards men and women who smoke.
Background image in cover photo: AuratMarchMUX
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