Fact Check: Woman crying in viral image is not Belgian woman assaulted in Islamabad

On August 14, 2024, a Belgian woman was found abandoned on an Islamabad street in Pakistan with her hands bound behind her back. She was allegedly raped for five days.

In this context, an image of a woman in distress is widely shared on social media. The image is shared with a caption claiming that it is of a woman who was raped in Islamabad.

A social media user shared the image with a caption that reads, “Shameful, Belgian women sexually Assaulted for 5 Days by Muslims in Pakistan. The victim was found with her hands tied in Sector G-6 and was rescued by local.”

Similar posts can be seen here and here.

SouthCheck found that the claim was false. We found that the image is old and is of a Czech model arrested for possession of drugs.

On doing a Google reverse image search, we found the same image was uploaded by The Sun on March 27, 2023.

The story associated with the image suggests that Tereza Hluskova, 27, was arrested at Lahore's AIIama IqbaI International Airport after £1million of heroin was found in her bag. She was en route to Ireland via Dubai. The report further suggested that she was convicted and sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison in January 2018. However, with a series of appeals, the model was eventually released in 2022, having served just four years of her sentence.

We further found that The Tribune had reported about the incident on November 1, 2021. The report suggested that Tereza was later acquitted by Lahore High Court and the Czech foreign ministry also took to Twitter asking for release within a few days of the verdict.

The incident was also reported by the DailyMail UK

Hence, we can ascertain that the viral claim is false.