Claim: An image shows Raza Dar, one of the suspects involved in the kidnapping and sexual assault case of two foreign women in Lahore, standing with a police officer.
Fact: The image is likely AI-modified.
On 4 July 2026, a Facebook account named Asif Khan Marwat shared an image of two men standing with a police officer. The caption of the post reads:
“یہ ہیں ڈار خاندان کے چشم وچراغ جو ساری دُنیا کی لڑکیوں کو پاکستان لا کر عین غین کرتے پھر رہے ہیں”
[Translation: “These are the scions of the Dar family, who are bringing girls from all over the world to Pakistan and engaging in illicit dalliances with them.”]
Kidnapping case of two foreign women in Lahore
On 2 July, the Lahore police registered a case against five people suspected of kidnapping and sexually assaulting two foreign women. The FIR available with Soch Fact Check lists section 365A (kidnapping or abducting for extorting property, valuable security, etc) and 375A (gang rape). It mentioned a man named Raza Dar, a person the women referred to as “boss” and three other men.
A copy of the FIR obtained by Soch Fact Check
The FIR stated that the two women named Stephanie and Astrid, a Dutch and a Venezuelan national respectively, first met Dar in Singapore in October 2025. According to Stephanie’s statement cited in a report by Dawn, he invited them to Pakistan and arranged their visas under the pretence of introducing them to new investors for her company. Soch Fact Check also obtained her original statement to the judicial magistrate in which she stated that she and Astrid arrived in Islamabad on 26 June and spent three days at a hotel.
An excerpt from Stephanie’s statement to the judicial magistrate on 2 July 2026
An excerpt from Stephanie’s statement to the judicial magistrate on 2 July 2026
In her statement, Stephanie added that they travelled to Lahore with Dar on 29 June 2026 where he lured them into a house under the pretext of celebrating a relative’s birthday. However, they found the residence empty. She added that within fifteen minutes, four armed men stormed inside and tied up both the women, after which they demanded high amounts of ransom. She stated that Dar initially pretended to be a victim too but later his complicity with the armed men had become evident.
According to the Dawn report, she accused the kidnappers of demanding $2 million and electronically transferring $17,000 in cryptocurrency from her accounts. She also detailed an account of sexual assault that took place on 30 June which was confirmed by medical reports issued on 6 July after the DNA of three of the suspects matched.
DIG Lahore Muhammad Faisal Kamran said in a press briefing that the FIR was registered after a man named Carlos, the father of one of the women, called the emergency helpline “15” from Spain and alerted the Defence assistant superintendent of police (ASP) about the situation.
Kamran added that the victims were rescued after the car transporting them to another location crashed into another vehicle which gave them the opportunity to escape and seek shelter in a shop near Bhatta Chowk. After being rescued, they departed from the country on 3 July, he added.
DIG Kamran also confirmed that when his team was trying to trace the suspects, they spoke to a few people living in the raided houses who informed them that the place was previously rented out by the relatives of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar. A police official then identified one of the suspects as Muhammad Raza Dar after confirming the information from his family.
Dawn quoted police officials investigating the case claiming that a total of eight suspects have been arrested in the case, including someone the victims referred to as the “boss” who was providing instructions to the other men via a phone call, as described in the FIR.
On 3 July, the judicial magistrate at Cantt Courts in Lahore issued a remand order, a copy of which is available with Soch Fact Check, that approved a five-day physical remand for Ahmad Raza, Sikandar Aziz Khan, Hassan Raza and Sajid Ali. Later, on 13 July, the court extended their remand by four more days.
Remand order approved by the judicial magistrate in Cantt Court on 3 July
On 5 July 2026, the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Political Affairs Rana Sanaullah appeared on Geo News’ show ‘Naya Pakistan’ and stated that Deputy PM Ishaq Dar is being dragged in this matter “unnecessarily.”
“A non-issue is being turned into an issue. This matter is being stretched from left and right to create an effect for him [Ishaq Dar]. Even if his [Dar’s] relative is involved, no matter how close they are, he [Dar] is not responsible for his [Raza] words and actions,” Sanaullah stated.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check accessed all the court documents and the FIR related to the case through a crime reporter, who does not want to be named yet, to check for any credible images linked with the case. In one of the documents, the police had requested a 14-day physical remand of the accused persons. However, the judicial magistrate, named Azhar Mahmood, signed off on only five days of physical remand.
Court order signed by the judicial magistrate on 3 July 2026
The document has an image attached to it on the top-left corner which looks similar to the image under investigation. Both the images feature three men, with the one on the left side of the image being a police officer wearing a beret.
Left: Image of accused persons in the 3 July 2026 court order, Right: Image being fact-checked
However, the poor quality of the image in the court document did not clarify the identities of the accused persons. The text of the court announcement itself does not distinguish the men in the image by their names, and therefore, it is not possible to confirm which one of the men in the image shows Raza Dar in particular.
Soch Fact Check could not find any publicly available verified image of Raza Dar either. Moreover, a reverse image search of the image did not lead to any credible sources but to more social media accounts sharing the image with a similar claim, hence we suspected that the image in the claim is fake.
Reverse image search of the picture leads to more social media accounts sharing the claim with a similar caption on 4 July 2026.
To confirm if Dar is present in this court image or not, Soch Fact Check reached out to Waqas Awan, court reporter for GEO News, who was present at Cantt Court at the time of this hearing. He verified that Dar is present in the picture, however, due to the quality of the image he couldn’t single out which one of these men is actually Dar.
Soch Fact Check suspected that the visual under investigation is likely an AI-modified version of the picture attached with the court order. We noticed the uneven white patches on the two men’s beards as well as the misspelled badge of the officer reading “COMMANDÒ”. Moreover, the officer’s upper arm looks unusual. Taking cues from these discrepancies, we ran the image through a few AI detection tools.
Inconsistencies visible in the image under investigation
Soch Fact Check ran the image through Hive Moderation’s AI-Generated Content Detection tool. It concluded that the image has a 88.5% likelihood of being AI-generated and a 0.1% likelihood of being a deepfake.
Result by Hive Moderation
We also verified the image through OpenAI to check if it was created using the American artificial intelligence company’s tools. The results confirmed that the picture was “generated using OpenAI tools,” stating that “a SynthID watermark that originated from OpenAI” was found.
Result by OpenAI
The visual discrepancies based on our individual analysis and the strong verdicts from both the AI tools confirm that the image under investigation is a modified version of the picture attached with the court document. It has been specifically created, or substantially edited, using OpenAI as it contains the SynthID watermark.
Virality
Soch Fact Check first came across a viral post on Facebook with as many as 1,200 likes and 301 reshares.
The image was also shared on Instagram, with one reel garnering 25,700 views.
It was shared on X as well where it received as many as 148,200 and 62,400 views on separate posts.
Conclusion: A viral image claiming to show Raza Dar, one of the primary suspects arrested in the kidnapping and sexual assault case of two foreigners in Lahore, has been modified using AI.
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com