Video of anti-militant operation circulated with false claim of Indians being detained

A video circulated on the social media platform Facebook claims that the Bangladesh Army detained three Indians, along with weapons, from a house in Sylhet. However, a fact-check by Dismislab has found the claim to be false. The video shows footage from an anti-militant operation conducted by the army in 2017, and no information could be found indicating that any Indians or anyone else were detained during that operation.

A 13-second video was posted from a Facebook page named Defense 71 BD. The video shows armed members of the Bangladesh Army taking positions outside a building, while gunshots can be heard.

The post read, “Bangladesh Army detained 3 Indians along with weapons from a house” (verbatim). As of the publication of this report, the video had been viewed more than 35,000 times and shared 560 times.

Through a key-frame search, Dismislab found several news reports published about the original incident (1, 2). The images used in these reports match exactly with the recently circulated video. The color and design of the building visible in the video, the yellow pickup van in front of it, and the row of betel nut trees near the building all match the images published by BBC Bangla and bdnews24.

These reports, published on August 27 and 28, 2017, reveal that an operation named “Operation Twilight” was conducted around a building called Atia Mahal in the Dakshin Surma area of Sylhet. In this operation, four suspected militants were killed inside the building. It was also stated that there was no possibility of any other militants remaining inside apart from those killed. No information was found indicating that any Indian or anyone else was detained during this operation.

All social media captions, quotations, and news excerpts in this article have been translated into English from the languages in which they were originally posted or published.