Photos claimed to show Tarique Rahman being tortured are of different incidents
Recently, two photos were circulated on the social media platform Facebook, claiming that Prime Minister Tarique Rahman had been tortured. However, a fact-check by Dismislab finds this claim to be false as one of the photos is of an incident involving the torture of a person in police custody in 2007 and the other is of police torture in China.
A photo was posted from a group operated under the name “Tarique Rahman” on Facebook. The post read, “The person lying on the floor is Mr Tarique Rahman, the child of the Proclaimer of Bangladesh’s Independence, Martyred President Ziaur Rahman, and three-time former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia.” In the photo, an individual is seen suspended with his hands tied behind his back. The photo was also shared with the same claim from multiple (1, 2, 3, 4) groups and personal profiles on Facebook. The photo was also shared from an Instagram profile.
By conducting a reverse image search, Dismislab found a report by The Daily Star. The circulated photo appears in the report published on January 27, 2007. The caption of the photo read, “Ratan, detained on charges of theft, was suspended from the ceiling in the Duty Officer’s room of Bogura Sadar Police Station last Thursday. However, police showed him arrested yesterday.”
Another photo was posted from a Facebook profile with text reading, “Look who is lying on the floor, will you? The person lying on the floor is Mr. Tarique Rahman, the child of the proclaimer of Bangladesh’s Independence, Martyred President Ziaur Rahman, and three-time former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia.”
Upon conducting a reverse image search to verify the photo’s source, a report by a volunteer organization in China was found. In this report, the photo was shown to depict a person being tortured in police custody in China in 2002.
That is to say, both photos circulated on social media with the claim that Prime Minister Tarique Rahman had been subjected to torture are of different incidents.
