Ambulance and ghost story fuel Punjab campus panic over 'missing' students

Rumours outrun the facts in Punjab

Within 24 hours, protests broke out at two private universities in Punjab over disturbing claims involving female students. At both campuses, the accounts spread rapidly on social media before police had established what had actually happened.

What began as fragments became a campus-wide crisis. In each case, rumours raced ahead of the authorities' ability to answer students' questions, turning isolated incidents into a broader sense of alarm.

How a scare took shape at Chitkara

At Chitkara University, near Rajpura in Patiala district, the story grew from a series of seemingly disconnected events. Screams were reportedly heard from a girls' hostel, ambulances were seen on campus, and a story began circulating about a supposedly haunted hostel room.

Online, these fragments became a much more serious claim — that two female students were missing and the university was concealing their deaths. The leap from a ghost story and an ambulance sighting to accusations of a cover-up illustrates how quickly anxiety can escalate when institutions do not address concerns in real time.

The pattern across campuses

The episode points to a recurring dynamic: rumours spread before authorities had answered students' questions, and soon what had begun as fragments became a campus-wide crisis. In both universities, the absence of verified information created a vacuum that social media rapidly filled.

As Team TOI Plus notes, the incidents underscore how a mix of fear, hearsay and unverified visuals can transform a localised concern into a full-blown protest within a single day.