Lighthouse Journalism found a video, which featured two men beating another man with sticks, with his hands tied on a roadside. It was claimed along with the video that the video shows, Hindus assaulting a young Muslim man, the video was also claimed to be from India.
During the investigation we found that the video was not from India, but from Bangladesh and was being shared with misleading claim.
The claim was necessary to fact check because it was being falsely presented as a recent incident from India and given a communal angle by claiming that Hindus had assaulted a Muslim man. Such misleading claims can create confusion about the location and circumstances of an incident and may fuel communal tensions.
Claim:
X user Ground Eye shared the viral video with misleading claim.
Other users are also sharing the video with similar claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by uploading the video in the Invid tool and obtaining keyframes from the video.
We then ran a reverse image search on the keyframes which led us to a video uploaded on Facebook in the month of July.
The caption in Bengali language said: জুলুমের চুড়ান্ত মহড়া চলছে আমাদের নতুন মবল্যান্ডে।
Translation: The final rehearsal of the massacre is going on in our new mobland.
Another Facebook user posted the video in July.
The caption said: স্বাগতম নতুন বাংলাদেশ।
Translation: Welcome to the new Bangladesh.
Both the Facebook users belonged to Bangladesh.
We also checked the text on the background, we cropped the image and ran it through Google Gemini. The text it said in Bengali was: গুলশান একাডেমি স্কুল এন্ড কলেজ
Translation: Gulshan Academy School & College.
We then ran a keyword search from the obtained translation. This led us to Facebook page of Gulshan Academy of School and College in Dhaka.
We then observed the video carefully and found that there was a contact number written on the wall behind the people. The contact number was a little blur, yet it could be identified as: 01755-759396.
In Bangladesh, a phone number starting with 017 belongs to Grameenphone, the largest mobile network operator in the country.
We also identified the text in the background, below the contact details. The details as per translation through Google Gemini in English were, Hafizia Madrasa, Residential / Non-residential / Day Care. We found a post on Facebook saying this was in Bangladesh.
Conclusion: Old, unrelated video from Bangladesh is being shared as recent from India with claims of assault by Hindu men on a Muslim man. The viral claim is misleading.
