Clip of Imam Being Detained by Police in Bangladesh Shared With Misleading Claim

Bangladesh police detained an Imam for leading funeral prayers for students killed during the recent protests.

Fact-Check: He was arrested for offering prayers for students who died during recent protests in Bangladesh.

(Source: The Quint)

A video showing two uniformed men taking away a man wearing a skull cap with his hands joined together and head facing the ground in public is being shared on social media platforms.

The claim: Those sharing have claimed that the Bangladesh police arrested a Muslim cleric or Imam for offering prayers on the road and compared it to India, where there have been repeated controversies over offering namaz on the streets.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is this true?: The claim is misleading.

• The cleric was arrested by the police for leading funeral prayers for students killed during the recent protests over government job quotas in Munshiganj, Bangladesh.

What we found: We divided the video into multiple screenshots and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.

• These results showed us the same video uploaded by TRT World on their official YouTube page on 19 July.

• It was uploaded with the title, "Bangladesh police detain Imam leading funeral prayers." The description also read similarly.

• Similarly, the results also showed us a report by Al Jazeera from 18 July. It also included the same video as the viral clip. The report also stated that the cleric was arrested for offering funeral prayers for students who died during the recent demonstrations.

Here is the preview of the report by AJ.

(Source: Al Jazeera/Screenshot) 

• Bangladeshi media outlets also reported on this incident. Kalbela reported that the two arrested were Imam Abdur Rahman Hiron and city Bangladesh Nationalist Party member secretary Advocate Mahbub-ul-Alam Swapan.

• The police told the news outlet that this created "anarchy," as they were doing this on the road.

• RisingBd also reported the same.

Visuals of people in Bangladesh offering namaz on the streets: Euro News posted a video showing Muslims offering prayers on the streets on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan. It is from 2019.

Conclusion: The viral video is being shared with a false claim that the Imam was arrested for performing namaz on the road.'

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