Laiba Ijaz, 24, was a physics gold medallist from the International Islamic University Islamabad who wanted to study in the United States. Her father, Rana Muhammad Ijaz, runs a dairy shop in Islamabad's G-10 neighbourhood. He sold a plot of land and the family's jewellery to fund what he believed was her Harvard application. The total paid to a man named Muhammad Noman reached at least 7.2 million rupees ($25,900). Every document Noman produced — Harvard offer letters, a US immigration form, a business-class ticket to Boston — was fake. Labia met Noman at a call centre where she worked. He later began visiting the family's shop, presented a Supreme Court service card, and offered to handle her university application. The fraud unravelled on October 6 when a travel agent and a lawyer neighbour confirmed none of the documents were genuine. Three days later, on October 9, Laiba was found dead near her home. Police initial findings pointed to suicide; her family insists she was killed. Noman was arrested two days after Laiba's death following a direct order from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. On October 20, police reported that four men on motorcycles opened fire while Noman was being transported to recover evidence, allegedly trying to free him but fatally shooting him instead. No arrests have been made in connection with that attack. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi visited the family and handed over more than 5 million rupees ($18,000) officials said was recovered from Noman. The structural failure behind the tragedy is plain: Pakistan does not regulate education consultancies. The All Pakistan Association of Foreign Education and Immigration Consultants confirms there is no regulatory body that checks or registers education consultants. The Federal Investigation Agency noted Noman was not a registered visa agent — but no registration system exists to prevent the next Noman. As Nushmiya Sukhera of CollegeWorks in Lahore stated directly: "No education consultancy can guarantee admission." Demand for US education among Pakistani students is surging. During the 2024-2025 school year, more than 13,000 Pakistani students enrolled at US institutions — a 75 percent increase from 2017-2018, according to the Institute of International Education's Open Doors report. This rising demand, combined with zero regulatory infrastructure, creates a target-rich environment for fraud. The families most vulnerable are exactly the ones least equipped to verify documents: lower-middle-class households betting everything on a child's talent. The case has all the hallmarks of a systemic extraction pattern rather than an isolated crime. A family with limited formal education but extraordinary commitment to their daughters' advancement was stripped of its savings by a single predator operating in a vacuum that the state has chosen not to fill. The political response — a prime ministerial order, a ministerial visit, recovered cash — addresses the symptom. The disease is a government that collects no licensing fees, enforces no standards, and maintains no registry for an industry handling tens of thousands of families' aspirations annually. Forensic results on Laiba's death remain pending. The police investigation into Noman's killing in custody has produced no arrests. The family's grief is compounded by unanswered questions about both deaths. What is not in question is the regulatory gap that made the fraud trivially easy to execute.
