- Early Sunday, September 27, hundreds of students gathered near the girls' hostel at Lovely Professional University after a Reddit post alleged a rape on campus — a claim police and the university say has NO evidence behind it.
- The gathering turned violent: students climbed an IAF MiG-23 jet and a military tank on campus, smashed windows, set parts of a building on fire, and blocked National Highway 44 for 15+ hours.
- LPU suspended regular classes for 10 days from September 28 and postponed mid-term exams until further notice.
- Dean Dr Sorabh Lakhanpal called the episode "rumour rage," saying investigations found no evidence and that masked outsiders drove the vandalism; police registered an FIR based on students' statements.
- Chitkara University declared September 28 to October 1 as non-teaching working days — the fallout spread beyond LPU.
It took one anonymous Reddit post, a few hours, and a phone screen to bring one of India's largest private universities to a standstill.
Early Sunday, September 27, at around 1am, hundreds of students gathered near the girls' hostel at Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Phagwara, in Punjab's Kapurthala district. A post on Reddit had alleged that a female student had been raped on campus on September 24. Students claimed the attacker was a plumber or construction worker, that the warden had been informed, and that no action followed. One detail in the post — that the student's roommate had said she died by suicide — poured fuel on the fire.
Here is the critical part, and it needs to be stated plainly: none of it has been proven. Police and the university say no evidence of the alleged assault has been found so far. An FIR was registered based on the students' statements, and an investigation is underway — but as of now, the allegation remains exactly that: an allegation. No victim has been identified, and no name exists.
That did not stop the night from exploding.
The night the campus burned
The gathering outside the hostel turned into a rampage. Students climbed atop an Indian Air Force MiG-23 aircraft and a military tank displayed on campus as exhibits — surreal images that quickly circulated online. Window panes were smashed, flower pots broken, parts of a building set on fire, and campus shops vandalised. The anger spilled beyond the campus gates: the Jalandhar–Phagwara stretch of National Highway 44 was blocked for more than 15 hours, choking one of the region's busiest corridors.
LPU's response was swift and sweeping. Regular classes were suspended for 10 days starting September 28, mid-term exams were postponed until further notice — the schedule will be shared through the University Management System — and students were told they could head home with their parents' consent. Everyone else was ordered to stay in their hostels. A mega-campus of tens of thousands simply went quiet.
"Rumour rage": what the officials say
Dean Dr Sorabh Lakhanpal, speaking to NDTV, had a two-word diagnosis for the whole episode: "rumour rage." According to him, investigations by the university, the civil administration and the police found no evidence to support the allegations, and masked outsiders — not students — were primarily responsible for the vandalism.
Vice Chancellor Dr Jaspal Singh Sandhu said the police had registered an FIR based on the students' allegations and that the university was offering its full support to the investigation.
The police line itself has shifted as the case developed. SSP Kapurthala Gaurav Toora initially said the police had no information about any rape. DIG Naveen Singla of the Jalandhar Range later confirmed that a rape case had been registered on the basis of the students' statements. It is now under investigation — the legal process will determine what, if anything, happened.
A case study in viral misinformation
The fallout spread beyond LPU's gates. Chitkara University, another Punjab institution, declared September 28 to October 1 as non-teaching working days, citing administrative reasons — a precaution that speaks volumes about how contagious campus unrest can feel right now.
For anyone watching from the US or Europe, the episode is a startling case study in how fast misinformation can move. One unverified post on an anonymous forum shut down a mega-campus, froze exams, blocked a national highway — and all of it happened before a single fact had been established. The damage is entirely real: smashed glass, torched buildings, vandalised shops, a fortnight of lost classes.
There is an uncomfortable lesson layered underneath. The fury that night was not really about a Reddit post — it was about something the post activated: the genuine, ever-present fear of hostel safety that millions of students and parents live with. When that fear met an anonymous claim at 1am, there was no fact-check fast enough to get ahead of it. The university says masked outsiders hijacked the crowd; officials say no evidence supports the claim. But trust, once cracked at that hour of the night, does not reassemble by morning.
The modern internet has a pattern for this, and it rarely varies: a rumour doesn't need to be true to be expensive. It just needs to be believed by a few hundred people at 1am — with phones in their hands and a highway nearby.