Old Pakistani video falsely claimed as abuse of Hindu woman in Bangladesh
A video recently posted on X shows a woman being dragged along a street and beaten. The circulated video claims that people in Muslim-majority Bangladesh are torturing a Hindu woman. However, a Dismislab fact-check found that the circulated video is not from Bangladesh, but from an incident in Pakistan that took place nearly five years ago. According to reports published in the Pakistani media in January 2022, it shows a woman being beaten in Sialkot, Punjab, over a land dispute.
The video was posted on November 10 from a verified X account named “Gaurav.” In the 15-second video, a woman is seen being dragged along a street and beaten. The caption reads, “This is the shocking reality of Hindu women and religious minorities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. Where are the voices that speak so loudly about human rights and minority protection? Why the deafening silence? 😡”
As of the writing of this report, the video had been viewed more than 3,000 times.
To verify the video’s authenticity, Dismislab conducted a reverse image search using keyframes and found a video posted on April 1, 2024, by an X account named @ssgviews. The caption of the post stated that women and men of a wealthy landowner household in Punjab were dragging a woman, beating her, and kicking her in the head and face as punishment for not being of use. The first 15 seconds of the 1-minute-21-second video were found to be similar to the circulated video.
In the comments section of the post, a comment was found from the verified X account of “Punjab Police Official” of Pakistan. They stated that the incident occurred in Sialkot, Pakistan, in January 2022. The accused persons in the incident were arrested and prompt legal action was taken.
In further verification, a keyword search found reports published in multiple Pakistani media outlets in January 2022 (1, 2, 3). These reports state that the name of the woman subjected to torture is Munawar Kanwal. She was a resident of Sialkot in Pakistan’s Punjab province. According to the reports, she was beaten over a land dispute. In this incident, police filed a case and the accused were arrested. However, nowhere in the reports is the woman mentioned as a follower of Hinduism.
In other words, a nearly five-year-old video from Pakistan is being circulated with the false claim that Muslims in Bangladesh are torturing a Hindu woman, spreading disinformation on social media.
