A video is going viral online showing a man vandalising idols of Hindu deities inside a temple.
The claim along with the video states that it shows a Muslim man vandalising Durga puja pandal recently in Bangladesh.
X (formerly Twitter) user Baba Banaras (@RealBababanaras), who has shared misinformation several times before, also shared this claim.
An archive of this post can be seen here.
(Source: X/screenshot)
(Archived versions of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here and here.)
What's the truth?: While this video is indeed from Bangladesh's Dhaka district, it dates back to June 2023.
It is unrelated to Durga puja celebration that happened recently from 9 October to 13 October 2024.
Reports identified the man in the video as Mohammad Siddique who was later arrested.
How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the viral video and this led us to an old video shared on YouTube.
This was shared on 23 June 2023.
We found another post from Facebook which was a longer version of the viral video, this was shared on 22 June 2023.
The caption stated that it shows a man named Siddique vandalised six idols inside the temple located in Dhaka's Dohar.
Taking a cue, we performed a relevant keyword search on Google which led us to reports shared by Bangladesh news outlets like The Daily Amar Somoy and EKusher Kantha.
These reports were shared in June 2023 and stated that Mohammad Siddique, who was allegedly a drug addict and had "mental problems", was arrested for vandalising idols inside a Hindu temple in Dohar.
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 misleading as this is an old video.
He said, " This was the video of the incident that took place in June 2023 in Dohar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. There was no communal intention behind this. No attacks occurred recently which is claimed on the X (formerly Twitter) posts."
Conclusion: An old video from Bangladesh showing a man vandalising Hindu deities is going viral as a recent video from Durga Puja celebration.
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