Scene of dog attacking child not from Barishal, but from India
A child fell victim to an attack due to the failure to control stray dogs in Barishal, such a claim is being made in a video circulating on the social media platform Facebook. However, a fact-check by Dismislab reveals that the video is from an incident in the Mughalshah area of Najibabad, India. According to reports from Indian media, a pack of stray dogs attacked a 5-year-old child on June 16. Subsequently, the child was taken to the hospital.
A video depicting a scene where a child in an alley is suddenly attacked by many dogs was posted on a Facebook page named Daily Barishal on June 18. The caption of this 19-second video reads: “Failure to control stray dogs? Child victim of an attack, residents of Barishal worried.” Inside the video, it was written, “Child victim of a stray dog attack.” So far, the video has been viewed 41,000 times and shared 97 times.
The same video was posted from a Facebook page named “Barishal Voice.” The caption of this post read, “Residents of Barishal city are expressing anger toward the City Corporation Administrator, Advocate Bilkis Akhter Jahan Shirin, due to the lack of effective measures to control stray dogs.”
To verify the truth, a reverse image search using keyframes led to a post on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) by the India-based media outlet The Statesman. The caption of the post read, “A horrific CCTV footage of a young child being brutally attacked by a pack of stray dogs in the Najibabad Mughalshah area of #UttarPradesh’s Bijnor district has sparked widespread outrage online. The tragic incident has once again fueled the debate over the rising menace of #straydogs, with many questioning the administration’s preparedness and demanding stricter measures to ensure public safety and prevent such incidents in the future.” The image used in this post matches the circulated video exactly.
Further search led to reports from multiple Indian media outlets regarding this incident. The headline of a report published by Asia Net was, “Child mauled by pack of 7 stray dogs in Uttar Pradesh, widespread outrage surrounding terrifying CCTV video.” The report stated, “A shocking CCTV video of a young child being attacked by a pack of stray dogs while walking down a narrow alley in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district has gone viral. The report of this incident, received from the Mughalshah area of Najibabad, has raised fresh concerns over the growing stray dog problem in many parts of India.” Additionally, multiple (1, 2) media outlets also referred to the same scene as being from India.
