Body recovery footage from the Sangu River falsely shared as victim of ‘Turag tragedy’
A video has recently been circulated on social media claiming that the body of Arefin, who allegedly went missing during an Awami League procession, was recovered from the Turag River. However, a Dismislab fact-check found that the footage actually shows the recovery of the body of a child from the Sangu River in Bandarban.
According to news reports, Arefin drowned in the Sangu River near the Shoiloshobha Residential Area in Bandarban on the evening of June 19 while washing his hands and face. His body was recovered on June 24, five days after he went missing.
The video was posted on June 29 by a verified account on X. The 10-second clip shows a body lying on a boat, surrounded by several people, while one person covers it with a white cloth. Text overlaid on the video reads, “Arefin has been found after six days.” The caption states, “Another body from the Turag Tragedy has been found. Arefin’s body.”
The same video was also shared with the identical claim in a Facebook group named Supporters of Bangladesh Awami League. At the time of writing, the post had received 175 reactions and had been shared 41 times. One user commented, “The people of Bengal will avenge these killings.” Another, however, rejected the claim, writing, “This is a video from Bandarban, but they are passing it off as Turag” (translated from Bangla).
To verify the footage, Dismislab extracted several keyframes from the video and conducted a reverse image search. The search led to a video published on June 24 by the official Facebook page of the Chattogram-based newspaper Dainik Azadi. The caption reads, “Body of child Arefin recovered from Bandarban’s Sangu River five days after going missing.” The first 10 seconds of the 45-second news video match the viral clip exactly, although the news outlet blurred the image of the body.
Further verification using relevant keywords found reports on the incident published by multiple news outlets (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). According to Bangladesh Pratidin, 11-year-old Arefin drowned on the evening of June 19 after playing with friends and going to wash his hands and face in the Sangu River near the Shoiloshobha Residential Area. Approximately 114 hours later, on the afternoon of June 24, locals spotted a body floating near the Pinechhara area of the Sangu River in Bandarban municipality. They retrieved it by boat, and family members later identified the body as that of the missing child, Arefin.
Therefore, the video being circulated as showing the recovery of a person who went missing in the “Turag tragedy” actually depicts the recovery of a child’s body from the Sangu River in Bandarban.
For context, on June 22, a day before the anniversary of the now-banned Awami League, several Awami League and Chhatra League activists held a boat procession from the Turag River trawler ghat in Ashulia, Dhaka. When local BNP activists and police reportedly chased the activists, several participants jumped into the river. Since then, social media has been flooded with various unverified claims regarding the recovery of bodies allegedly linked to the incident.
