Religious festival of India disseminated as an attack on a temple in Bangladesh
A video is being circulated from a verified account on the platform X (formerly Twitter) called ‘RT India,’ claiming that it depicts an attack on a Hindu temple in Bangladesh. However, upon verification, the video is found to depict a religious festival in Sultanpur, located in Bardhaman district of West Bengal, India.
The account ‘RT India’ posted the video with the caption: “Hindu Temple Attacked in Bangladesh – Footage Claims to Show Mob Vandalising & Destroying Statue of Deity.” The video shows someone attempting to remove the head of an idol. It has been reposted over 200 times. A similar claim was made by Saleh Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of Weekly Blitz, on his X account. He wrote: “While Islamists in Bangladesh attacking Hindu Temples, vandalizing deities, their leaders are making tons of cash by importing essential food items, including potato, spices, lentil, egg etc from India.” This post was reposted more than 750 times. The same video was also shared by the official X account of Indian media outlet Zee News. In the caption, it was claimed that extremists were attacking the Kali idol at a Kalibari in Bangladesh.
When Dismislab investigated the source of the video, they found it had originally been posted on Facebook on November 29 with hashtags referencing “#SultanpurKaliMataNiranjan.” By taking the lead from the hashtag, Dismislab found that the video depicts a religious ritual in Sultanpur, Khandaghosh, Bardhaman district, West Bengal. It shows the immersion (Niranjan) of a Kali idol, which is part of a unique ritual observed every 12 years. During this festival, a 12-foot-tall idol is dismantled piece by piece and immersed in a pond, after which a new idol is crafted for worship to be immersed again after 12 years. Additional visuals of this ritual were found on a page called Sultanpur Kiranmoyi Library. A comparison confirms that the video posted by RT India is identical to those depicting the Kali immersion festival, proving that it is not related to any temple attack.
To verify whether RT India is affiliated with Russia Today (RT), the state-controlled Russian news outlet, Dismislab reached out to Ekaterina Burova, International News Producer at RT. However, no response was received. Dismislab also contacted Evgenia Konareva, Press Secretary of the Russian Embassy in Bangladesh, who confirmed that the X account named RT India is indeed an official account of RT. Notably, at the time of writing this report, the post in question from RT India was no longer available.
Another video was posted by the X account ‘Baba Banaras,’ claiming: “See how Hindu temples were vandalized yesterday in Bangladesh, and how Hindu devotees were beaten in various cities. The entire world remains silent about this Hindu genocide in Bangladesh.” This video shows individuals damaging a structure.
Upon verifying the video, it was found that the event depicted did not occur on December as claimed. Instead, it dates back to August 29 and pertains to an incident at the shrine of Ali Pagla in Bamanjani Bazar, located in the remote Char area of Mansurnagar Union in Kazipur Upazila, Sirajganj, Bangladesh. The vandalism at this shrine was reported in a video published by a YouTube channel named The Metro TV. The video, titled “The Shrine of Ali Pagla in Kazipur, Sirajganj, Being Demolished”, matches the footage shared by the “Baba Banaras” account. This confirms that the video is unrelated to any attack on a Hindu temple.
The ‘Baba Banaras’ account has previously been associated with disseminating communal misinformation. For instance, in August this year, the account misrepresented an incident involving electrocution during a Rath Yatra as an attack by the Bangladeshi army on Hindu protesters. In November, when Kohinoor Akter, a leader of the Krishak League, was attacked while attending an Awami League program, the account shared the video of the incident falsely claiming it to be the rape of a Hindu woman.
