Fact-Check: Old Video Falsely Peddled as Hindus Trying To Flee Bangladesh

The video dates back to May 2024, before the recent unrest and violence Bangladesh.

A video, which shows a crowded fleet of launches(ships) floating around in a small space on the water, has gone viral on X (formerly Twitter).

The claim: Some users sharing the video have claimed that it shows visuals of Hindus fleeing Bangladesh amid the recent unrest and violence in the country.

(Archives of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here and here.)

Is it true?: No, the video predates the recent turmoil in Bangladesh.

• The oldest version of this video dates back to April, and likely shows people travelling within Bangladesh for Eid celebrations.

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How did we find out the truth?: We divided the viral video into multiple keyframes using InVID, a video verification tool, and ran reverse image searches on some of them.

• Through Google Lens, we came across the same video on a Facebook page called 'Extreme Launch Lover', which was shared on 29 April.

• It was captioned "The launches are leaving with thousands of passengers on the roof," in Bangla, mentioning that it was taken in Bangladesh.

The page had also shared a similar photo on 8 April, mentioning that the Sadarghat terminal in Dhaka was seeing a "a lot of passenger pressure."

We found the same video on another Facebook page, which had shared it on 30 May, mentioning that the passengers were travelling via launches for Eid.

Using the keywords 'Dhaka launch terminal Eid', we looked for news reports for more information.

• This led us to reports by The Daily Star and The Business Standard, which noted that an estimated 22.5-27 lakh people were expected to travel from Dhaka via waterways before Eid, which was celebrated on 10 and 11 April.

While we could not independently verify the location or the context of the video, we can confirm that the video is unrelated to the recent turmoil in Bangladesh.

Conclusion: An old video showing crowded launches is being shared to falsely claim that it shows Hindus trying to flee Bangladesh.

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