I've had a similar experience with learning the Perso-Arabic script recently, to be able to read Urdu.

But this report does seem far-fetched.

Trivia: lines from Urdu poetry are a normal class of conversational idiom here in North India, but after the partition of British India into modern India and Pakistan, the Urdu script isn't taught in school in most Indian states, and likewise for the Hindi script in Pakistan. Urdu and Hindi are practically the same language in informal use.