Indian video falsely claims Hindu girl abducted in Bangladesh
A video recently posted on Facebook claims that a group of “frenzied jihadists” is publicly abducting a Hindu girl from her own home in Bangladesh. However, Dismislab’s fact-check has found that the circulating video is not from Bangladesh but from Gujarat, India. Reports published in several Indian news outlets state that this is footage of a 19-year-old woman being taken away from her live-in partner’s home in Vadgam, Gujarat, on June 22.
The video was posted on September 30 from a Facebook page named Hindusena. The 13-second video is divided into two parts. The lower part shows two men dragging a girl toward a car parked nearby. Text within the video reads, “In Bangladesh, in broad daylight, a Hindu girl from her own home, a frenzied jihadist group. is taking away.” (verbatim)
In the upper part of the video, a person is also heard saying the same thing. The caption reads, “They are forcibly abducting a Hindu girl from her home.”
As of the publication of this report, the video had been viewed more than 298,000 times and shared more than 2,000 times. Users have reacted to the video more than 6,000 times. An analysis of the comments shows that many users assumed the incident to be true and expressed their opinions. One user wrote, “What are you all doing, eunuchs,” while another commented, “This is making even ’71 bow down.”
In the course of the investigation, a reverse image search was conducted using keyframes from the video. This led to a 40-second video report published on June 25 of this year on the verified Facebook page of the Indian news outlet “The Statesman.” A portion of the report’s description reads, “A 19-year-old woman was allegedly abducted from the house of her live-in partner in #Gujarat‘s Vadgam village by her father and three others, according to a police complaint. The couple had been in a relationship for two years and had recently signed a live-in agreement before moving in together.” The scenes, people, their clothing, the surrounding structures, the parked car, and other elements in the first six seconds of the report were found to exactly match those in the circulating video.
A detailed verification using relevant keyword searches found that reports on this incident had been published in multiple Indian news outlets (1, 2). According to the report published in The Times of India, a 19-year-old woman in Gujarat, India, was taken away from her live-in partner’s home by her father and three other individuals. The incident occurred in the village of Vadgam in the state’s Aravalli district on June 22 of this year.
In other words, an abduction incident from India is being circulated under the false claim that it occurred in Bangladesh.
Previously, Dismislab published a detailed fact-check report after multiple false claims spread on social media were found to be used to incite communal tensions.
