Old Sherpur video falsely linked to death of Awami League leader’s son
In Noakhali, miscreants allegedly kidnapped an Awami League leader’s son from his house and demanded a ransom worth Tk 10 lakh. As the family failed to pay the money, the kidnappers allegedly killed the boy. Later, a video circulated on social media claiming that his body had been found behind their house. However, Dismislab’s factcheck finds that the footage actually shows the recovery of the body of a schoolboy who went missing in the Chellakhali River in Sherpur’s Nalitabari upazila on September 19 this year during a flash flood.
On October 3, a 20-second video was posted on Facebook with the caption,“03/10/25 The son of Awami League organizational secretary of Noakhali, Altaf Hossain, was abducted from home, and Tk 10 lakh was demanded. As he expressed his inability to pay, miscreants killed his son and left the body behind his house.” The same day, another Facebook post attached the video, claiming that BNP-Jamaat “terrorists” killed him. As of the writing of this report, that video had been viewed more than 78,000 times and shared nearly 280 times.
Several Facebook profiles and pages (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) shared the same video with identical claims. The same claim appeared in posts on Instagram (1, 2, 3) as well. A Threads profile also posted the video with the same claim but mentioned a different location in its caption. In the comment section, one user wrote, “There is no justice for these in this country,” while another commented, “This is not the work of miscreants, but the bastards of BNP Jataam NCP.”
To verify the source of the video, Dismislab conducted a reverse image search using several keyframes, and found a 26-second video posted on September 19 this year by a Facebook page named Sherpur Sangbad. The first 20 seconds of that video exactly match the one being circulated. The caption of that video reads, “The body of a missing 10-year-old boy named Humayun recovered from the Chellakhali River in Burunga Batkuchi area of Nalitabari upazila. The area is mourning! Oh, life!”
Dismislab ran further searches using relevant keywords and found reports on the same incident in multiple media outlets (1, 2, 3,4). A report published in Prothom Alo on September 19 stated,“In Sherpur’s Nalitabari upazila, a school student named Humayun (10) died after being swept away by flash floodwaters. His body was recovered by a fire service diving team around 9:00 p.m on Thursday, seven hours after he went missing. Humayun was the son of Dulal Mia of Burunga village and a second-grade student at Burunga Government Primary School.”
This means, a false claim is being spread using the footage of Sherpur’s incident, misrepresenting it as the recovery of the body of Awami League leader Altaf Hossain’s son in Noakhali, which is entirely baseless.
