Old photos recycled as recent arrest of chhatrashibir activists in Noakhali
Two photos have gone viral on Facebook claiming that two Shibir activists were arrested with a large cache of weapons during a police operation in Noakhali. However, Dismislab’s fact-check found that one of the photos showing the arrested men is actually from October 2021, when two Shibir leaders were arrested in a police operation in Moulvibazar. The second photo, showing the weapons, was taken in 2022 at a gun shop named “Shikar o Shikari” in Dhaka’s Paltan area.
The photos were posted from a personal Facebook profile. The caption read, “Two Shibir activists arrested with a large cache of weapons in a police operation in Noakhali.” The post had been shared 1,400 times at the time of writing this report. The same claim was also shared with the same photos from multiple Facebook profiles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), pages (1, 2, 3), and groups (1, 2).
In one of the photos, two men wearing white panjabis are seen standing. One of them is wearing a brown cap. To his left, a police officer is standing wearing a mask. To the right of the other man stands a person wearing a black T-shirt and a Detective Branch jacket, as another man stands in the background.
Reverse image search revealed a report by Ekushey TV. The report, published on October 16, 2021, contained an identical photo to the one in the viral post. The report stated, “Police have arrested two Shibir leaders from the Purbo Sultanpur area of Moulvibazar town, along with a large number of Jihadi books and leaflets. The information was disclosed by Additional Superintendent of Police (Crime and Administration) Hasan Md. Naser Rikabdar, during a press briefing held on Saturday afternoon at the office of the Moulvibazar Superintendent of Police. He said that more than 100 books of 26 types, along with Jamaat-e-Islami and Shibir’s Jihadi books, leaflets, donation receipts, and mobile phones were recovered from them.”
At that time, several other (1, 2, 3, 4) reports were also published on the same incident, using the same photo. None of those reports mentioned any weapons recovery from the arrested individuals.
The second photo shows six guns placed on a brown paper. When reverse-searched, Dismislab found a report by The Daily Star. The report, published on December 15, 2022, featured an identical photo to the one in the viral post. The title of the report was “Nasir Ahmed: The Last of the Gun Sellers.” The report was mainly about a gun shop named “Shikar o Shikari” in Dhaka’s Paltan area and its owner, Nasir Ahmed.
The report displayed several guns inside the shop, one of which matches exactly with the viral photo. Moreover, when Dismislab contacted the photographer, Noor-e-Alam, he confirmed that he took the photo inside the gun shop for that report.
The report stated, “Eighty-four-year-old Nasir Ahmed runs a gun shop in Paltan called ‘Shikar o Shikari’. He used to work as the Country Coordinator for the International Union Against Tuberculosis, but due to his passion for guns, he left his job and opened a gun shop in Dhaka in 1980.”
Therefore, the photos being spread claiming that Shibir activists were arrested with a large cache of weapons in Noakhali have no connection to the pictures.
Disclaimer: The original version of this fact-check report was published in Bengali on Dismislab’s Bengali website on October 26, 2025. The English translation was completed later; however, to maintain time accuracy and avoid any potential misinterpretation, the English version has been published with the original publication date.
