India TV Fact Check: A video of a girl with tape over her mouth and her hands and feet tied with rope is going viral on social media. The video is being shared with claims that, after Sheikh Hasina lost power, Hindus are being attacked in Bangladesh. It is alleged that this video is from Bangladesh, where Muslims kidnapped a Hindu girl and tied her hands and feet and made her sit on the road. However, the India TV fact check has revealed that these claims are completely false.
What is going viral?
A viral video shared on Facebook by a user depicts a girl bound with tape over her mouth, with a caption that reads: "A helpless Hindu girl in the clutches of Jihadis in Bangladesh, no one is coming forward to help. After some time, the savage wolves will kill her after making her a victim of their lust, you double-faced Hindus of Hindustan, there is still time to wake up."
India TV investigated
This video was going viral very fast on social media, so we decided to investigate this claim. We began by searching various websites and social media platforms using Google Open Search. However, we didn't find anything. So, we opted for reverse-searching the keyframes and found the same video in Facebook posts dated July 18, 2024, with captions in Bengali identifying it as being from Jagannath University in Dhaka. We then checked Google Maps and found that the university campus features a statue and a bus visible in the video. Additionally, a Facebook post connected to Jagannath University confirmed that the girl in the video is a student who was protesting the suicide of a fellow student named Avantika.
Another news report revealed that a candle-lit protest was held at Jagannath University three days after Avantika's death. During this protest, a student named Trisha staged a demonstration by taping her mouth and tying her hands and feet. This confirms that the video, which dates back to a protest at the university in March, is being incorrectly associated with current violence. =
What came out in the Fact Check?
India TV's investigation debunked the claim associated with the viral video. The fact check revealed that the video, which is from Dhaka's Jagannath University, dates back to March this year and depicts a protest over a student’s suicide. The assertion that Muslims in Bangladesh tied up a Hindu girl and threw her on the road is false. People are advised to be cautious of such misleading posts.
