FWIW, I noticed that I had two torch directories under /usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages:

torch-1.13.1+cu116.dist-info  (the installed version)
torch-1.12.1+cu116.dist-info  (containing only an empty file REQUESTED)

importlib_metadata.version("torch") was retuning None in this scenario. I think it was looking at the directory which only had the REQUESTED file.

After I removed that torch-1.12.1+cu116.dist-info directory, it fixed the problem, i.e. now: importlib_metadata.version("torch") == '1.13.1+cu116'

Originally posted by @sswam in #91216 (comment)