‘Confidential’ Letter Confirming Radiation Leak In Pakistan Is Fake

Claim

A “Radiological Safety Bulletin” issued by the Pakistani government, confirming radiation leak at a facility.

The archived version of the post can be seen here, which has clocked 24.3K views so far.

Fact

Newschecker noticed that the purported advisory was littered with glaring errors, indicating that it was fabricated. 

Some of the prominent errors were as follows —

 1. Spelling of “Confidential” in the header.
2. Spelling of “Northern Region” in the subject line.
3. “24:55” hours in the fourth line of the first paragraph, which should actually read 00:55 as 24:55 is not a valid time in the standard 24-hour clock format.
4. Spelling of routine in the same line.
5.  The word, “industrialirogical”, in the second line of the first paragraph, does not exist.

Also, the email domain @env.go.v.pk does not appear to be valid or registered, considering that in Pakistan, official government domains typically follow the structure @gov.pk, which indicates that it is not authentic.

We then ran a keyword search for “radiological safety bulletin Pakistan”, which did not lead us to any credible news reports about such a press release, nor any official confirmation of a radiation emergency by Pakistani or international authorities.

Even though the letter was purportedly issued through the Pakistan government’s National Radiological Safety Division (NRSD), Newschecker learnt that the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA) is the state’s premier regulatory body that regulates radiation facilities to ensure public and environmental safety. Also, a search for “Malik Asad Rafique director-general NRSD”, the alleged authorised signatory in the viral letter, did not throw up any records or reports about such an individual nor an organisation called NRSD.

We then reached out to Kamran Saqi, a senior defence journalist based out of Pakistan, who said the letter was fake. “The language is not official,” he said, while adding that the Ministry of Climate Change’s agency charged with protecting human health and issuing such a bulletin would be the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA), whose director-general is Nazia Zeb Ali, which further confirms that the letter is fabricated.

Also Read: Bhopal Police Arrest & Parade People For Raising Pro-Pak Slogans? No, Viral Claim Is False

Source
Conversation with Kamran Saqi, senior defence journalist based out of Pakistan
Analysis of letter