Old footage falsely shared as recent attack on education minister’s car
A video has been circulating on Facebook with the claim that the education minister’s car was vandalized in his hometown. However, a Dismislab fact-check found the claim to be false. The incident of attack and vandalism of Dr ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milon’s car in Kachua, Chandpur, occurred in 2022.
A Facebook profile posted a 57-second video on August 24 with the caption, “Education minister’s car vandalized in his own area!” The video shows the rear portion of BNP leader Ehsanul Hoque Milon’s car being attacked and vandalized. He is heard saying, “Rashid, tell the home minister that my car is being vandalized in Kachua.” At the time of publication of this report, the video had been viewed nearly 200,000 times and shared 1,000 times.
Another Facebook profile posted the same video with the caption, “Education minister ‘Murgi’ Milon’s car vandalized in his own area. Rashid tell home minister my car is being vandalized in Kachua… Your party is in power, so no one is counting you, and if your party is no longer in power, even your bodies will not be found.” (verbatim). At the time of publication of this report, the video had been viewed more than 3,000 times.
The video was also posted from multiple personal Facebook profiles and pages (1, 2, 3).
In its investigation, Dismislab used keyframes from the video to find a video published on Jamuna TV’s YouTube channel. Published on April 26, 2022, the video was titled, “Allegation of attack on Ehsanul Hoque Milon’s car in presence of police.” The footage from the 18-second mark matches the circulated video. In both videos, Ehsanul Hoque’s clothing, the car that was attacked and the surrounding scene are identical.
A relevant keyword search found reports about the incident published by multiple news outlets (1, 2, 3). These reports show that Ehsanul Hoque Milon’s car was attacked and vandalized in Kachua, Chandpur, on April 25, 2022. At the time, he and his wife, Nazmun Nahar Baby, were on their way to attend an iftar gathering. As the local Awami League was also scheduled to hold an iftar gathering at the same location, police asked him to use another route. The attack on his car then took place while police were present.
Therefore, the claim that the video shows an attack on the education minister’s car is false. The footage of Dr. Ehsanul Hoque Milon’s car being attacked and vandalized in Kachua, Chandpur, is from 2022, when he was not serving as education minister.
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.
