(Trigger Warning: Visuals and descriptions of graphic violence. Reader discretion is advised.)
Two disturbing videos — one showing a man's body lying on the ground, being kicked and hit by a group of people surrounding it, and the other showing a man being tied and attacked — are being shared on social media, claiming that they shows Muslims targeting and killing Hindus amid the recent turmoil in Bangladesh.
(Note: We have not added links to these videos due to their graphic nature.)
(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)
Is it true?: No, neither of the videos show Hindus being attacked.
The visuals show Awami League leaders Shahidul Islam Hiran and Selim Khan lynched by mobs in Bangladesh.
Both belong to the Muslim community.
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How did we find out the truth?: For both videos, we took cues from user comments on search engines and social media, and conducted reverse image searches using Google Lens to verify them.
Video One: Man on the ground being kicked
Under many of the claims, we came across comments saying that the man in the video was an Awami League leader.
Several users commented that the video showed an Awami League leader.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
Another user had shared this same video, mentioning the location of the incident as Chandpur.
The user mentioned that the video showed an incident in Chandpur.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
Taking a cue from this, we ran a keyword search for 'Awami League leader killed in Chandpur', which led us to news reports about such an incident.
This led us to a report by India Today, which mentioned that actor Shanto Khan and his father, expelled Awami League leader Selim Khan, were lynched by mobs while trying to flee from Chandpur.
News and fact-checking organisation Boom Live reached out to the chief reporter of Dhaka Post, Adnan Rehman, who corroborated the information in the article.
"Rahman confirmed to BOOM that the incident is from Chandpur, where Selim Khan, the upazila chairman, Lakkhipur Model Union, Chandpur, was lynced to death," the fact-check mentioned, dismissing the communal angle given to the incident.
Video Two: Man tied to a tree and mutilated
We followed the same process for the second video as well. For this clip, we found user comments mentioning that it showed a "local Awami League leader."
One of them also shared a photograph of the said leader.
The user mentioned that this video, too, showed an Awami League leader.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
We ran a reverse image search on the man's photo, which took us to several news reports published by Bangladeshi news outlets.
One such report by Bartabazar carried the same photo, identifying the man as Awami League General Secretary of Jhenaidah Sadar Upazila, Shahidul Islam Hiran.
It added that Hiran and his driver, Akter Hussain, were caught and killed by miscreants.
This is a translated version of Bartabazar's report.
(Source: Bartabazar/Screenshot)
Another report by Dhaka Post, with Hiran's image, mentioned that when protesters arrived to vandalise Hiran's house, he fired at them.
Agitated by this, they set fire to his residence, which caused the leader to be trapped on the third floor, where he died. The crowd then picked up his body and hung it at the Paira Chattar in the centre of the city.
Conclusion: Two video, which show Awami League leaders from the Muslim community being lynched, have gone viral with the false claim that they show Hindus being killed in Bangladesh.
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