Bangladeshi Actor Misidentified as American Being Harassed on Dhaka Streets

A video showing public harassing a woman sitting in a rickshaw and pushing her rickshaw aggressively is going viral on social media.

The claim states that it shows Bangladeshis "heckling and harassing" an American woman for not wearing hijab in public.

This post on X (formerly Twitter) by user 'Hindutva Knight' had garnered over one million views at the time of writing this story.

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

What's the truth?: This video shows Misthi Subas, a Bangladeshi actor, and not an American being harassed in Bangladesh.

• Subas was reportedly cutting a cake in Dhaka University campus to celebrate the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina’s birthday, which brought in a lot of strong public reaction.

How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the viral video on Google and this led us to a YouTube video shared by Channel Satkahon on 29 September.

• The video showed the same woman wearing the same attire.

• The title stated that this woman arrived at the University campus to celebrate Sheikh Hasina's birthday.

• Taking a cue, we performed a relevant keyword search on Google, which led us to several news reports by SATV, Protidiner Bangladesh, and The Daily Inqilab.

• These reports also carried visuals of the same woman and identified her as a Bangladeshi actor named Misthi Subas. 

• It added that Subas went to the Dhaka University campus to celebrate Sheikh Hasina’s 78th birthday when she was harassed by the locals.

We also reached out to a reporter: We spoke to a Bangladeshi reporter, Md Shabuj Mahmud, Senior Broadcast Journalist, Independent Television, who confirmed that this claim is false.

• "She is not American and was not harassed for hijab. She is a fan of ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. She was celebrating her birthday by cutting a cake in front of the Raju sculpture of TAC, University of Dhaka. She is a model and actress," he adds.

Conclusion: A video of a Bangladeshi actor being harassed in public is being shared to falsely claim that an American woman was harassed in Bangladesh for not wearing hijab.

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