Sialkot police book TikToker ‘Mr Pattlo’ and 53 others after stampede at mehndi event kills two, injures 18
Sialkot police have booked TikToker Muhammad Ansar, known as ‘Mr Pattlo’, and 53 others after a stampede at his mehndi and prize-distribution event at Faraz Ground in Daska killed two people and injured 18, with six suspects arrested.
Sialkot police have registered a case against TikToker Muhammad Ansar, known on social media as ‘Mr Pattlo’, and 53 other people after a stampede at his mehndi and prize-distribution event in Daska killed two people and injured 18 others. Six of the suspects named in the case have been arrested, while police say raids are continuing to arrest the TikToker himself, who left the scene immediately after the incident.
The stampede happened on Friday night at Faraz Cricket Ground on Daska Road, where hundreds of people had gathered for the mehndi ceremony and a prize-distribution event organised by Ansar. Dawn reported on Monday that the event had been advertised with a lucky draw offering 50 motorcycles and a car, a promise that drew a large crowd to the ground. Police later seized the 50 motorcycles and the car intended for the draw.
According to police and to Dawn’s account of the footage, the rush began when the stadium gates were opened and attendees were urged through loudspeakers to enter the ground at the same time. Dawn’s newspaper report on Monday added a further detail from the video: after the gates were opened, a man asked the guards to push people out and himself used a wooden club to push people back from the gate, a sequence that caused the stampede, with people falling and being trampled. Rescue 1122 initially reported one death and 13 injuries, but the figures rose as more of the injured reached hospitals, some taken there by other attendees rather than by ambulance.
The two people who died have been named in the reporting. The first was Muhammad Aqeel, aged 30, a resident of Budha Goraya, who died on Saturday. The second was Muhammad Rehan, who was critically injured in the stampede, was referred to Lahore’s Mayo Hospital for treatment, and succumbed to his injuries on Sunday, taking the death toll to two. Police put the number of injured at 18; the Express Tribune, counting those still injured after the second death, reported 17 others injured. The injured were taken to Allama Iqbal Memorial Teaching Hospital in Sialkot and to other hospitals in the area.
The first information report was registered on 31 October at Motra Police Station on the complaint of its station house officer, Mubeen Ahmed. It names Ansar, his brother Kashif Bashir, Faraz Sports Stadium owner Shahid Javed, and organisers Daniyal Munir, Munir Ahmed, Mohsin Ali, Irshad Ali, Abdullah Mehdi and Zohaib Mansha, along with 45 private security guards posted on duty at the event — 54 people in total. Sialkot District Police Officer retired Captain Dost Muhammad confirmed that six people involved in managing the event had been arrested, and police said operations were under way to arrest the remaining nominated suspects.
The case turns in part on the permission under which the event was held. A spokesperson for the Sialkot district administration said a no-objection certificate had been issued to the TikToker for holding a Mehfil-e-Sama, a gathering for devotional music and poetry, during a private event within an enclosed space in Daska. After reviewing reports of what actually took place, Deputy Commissioner Awais Mushtaq revoked the certificate. Police say the suspects face charges including violation of the terms of the permit and of standard operating procedures, misuse of loudspeakers, blockade of the main road, vandalism of citizens’ motorcycles, and causing loss of life and property.
The Express Tribune reported that the case was registered on the police’s own complaint under sections of the Pakistan Penal Code and the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, and that the district police officer himself visited the site. That detail matters because it shows the case was not driven by a private complainant but by the police’s own assessment of the event’s organisation — the advertising of high-value prizes, the handling of the gate, and the failure to manage a crowd drawn by the draw.
The incident raises a wider question about large, social-media-driven gatherings in Pakistan, where a prize announcement can pull hundreds of people to a venue that was permitted for something much smaller. In this case, the permitted event was a private, enclosed devotional gathering; the event that took place was a public-facing mehndi celebration with a mass prize draw, loudspeaker announcements urging simultaneous entry, and private guards at the gate. The gap between the permission and the reality is at the centre of the police case, and it is likely to be the focus of the investigation as it proceeds.
For the families, the immediate facts are stark: two men dead, more than a dozen injured, and a celebration that turned into a crush at the entrance to a sports ground. Aqeel’s death on Saturday and Rehan’s on Sunday, after referral to Lahore, mean the toll rose over the weekend rather than being known on the night itself — a pattern common in stampede cases, where the full casualty picture only emerges as the injured reach hospitals and their conditions change.
What happens next depends on the police investigation and on whether Ansar is arrested. Police say raids are continuing, and the six arrests so far are of people involved in managing the event rather than of the TikToker himself. If the investigation confirms the account of the gate and the loudspeaker announcements, the organisers could face prosecution on the loss-of-life and permit-violation charges already listed in the case. News Orbit Live will update this story if further arrests are made, if Ansar is taken into custody, or if police release a fuller account of how the crowd was managed at Faraz Ground on Friday night.
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