Woman caught in ‘objectionable situation’ not BNP leader Sanjida Islam Tulee, old video falsely spread
A video has recently gone viral on Facebook claiming that a woman and a man were caught in an “objectionable situation.” It is being claimed that the woman is Sanjida Islam Tulee, a reserved-seat Member of Parliament from BNP. However, Dismislab’s fact-check finds the claim to be false.
A video was posted on July 21 from a Facebook profile named “Maolana Bazlur Rashid.” The post read, “MP Sanjida Akron Tulee, nominated from Dhaka-17 seat, caught while fooling around!”
By the time this report was published, the video had been shared more than 300 times, with over 900 reactions. The same video, with the same claim, was found to have been posted from several other pages and profiles as well (1, 2, 3).
To verify the authenticity, a reverse search of several keyframes was conducted, which led to the same video on an Instagram account named “Bihar Dekho” and on a Facebook page named “Smart Bangladesh.” The post on the “Smart Bangladesh” page read, “Video of the planning manager of Anant Garments and the ‘welfare ma’am’ being caught yesterday.” The video published on this page was comparatively clearer.
Initial observation found no resemblance between the face of the woman in the video and the face of Sanjida Islam Tulee. Following this, two screenshots of the woman’s face from the video were compared with two photos taken from Sanjida Akter Tulee’s Facebook page using a face comparison tool. One comparison showed a 25 percent match between the two faces, and another showed a 32 percent match. The tool’s result stated that the individuals in the two compared photos were not the same person.
The AI tool Face Comparison compares two faces and provides an instant result. The website states that for two photos to be confirmed as the same person, the match rate must be higher than 80 percent.
Therefore, the woman seen in the video circulated with the claim that she was detained in an “objectionable situation” is not BNP lawmaker Sanjida Islam Tulee.
The exact same video had previously gone viral on social media in late April as well. At that time, the same veiled woman was claimed to be NCP leader Dr Mahmuda Mitu and BNP leader Sanjida Islam Tulee. At that time also, fact-checking organizations ‘Rumor Scanner‘ and ‘Fact Watch‘ had published reports declaring both claims false.
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.
