A video showing a schoolgirl being heckled in Bangladesh has surfaced with captions falsely claiming that it is an incident from West Bengal. The posts further give a communal spin and claim that the incident shows how Hindu girls are being attacked and forced to show affection towards Muslim men.
BOOM found that the video is from a school in Dhaka, Bangladesh where two girls got into a fight over a male friend.
Khodeza Begum Rina, the principal of the school where the incident took place, confirmed to BOOM Bangladesh that the incident happened two years ago and was not communal in nature.
The Claim
The video has been overlaid with text in Hindi that translates to, "You will have to go with my brother and treat him with affection when alone. New form of Love Jihad." The caption, which labels the incident as 'Love Jihad', refers to a conspiracy theory that alleges Hindu girls are targeted by Muslims for religious conversion. A verified user on X shared the video with the caption, "Situation of West Bengal Girls".
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
What We Found: Video Is From Dhaka, Bangladesh
1. Video Is From A School in Bangladesh: BOOM broke the video into keyframes and found several clearer versions of the video online. The uniform's school badge is visible in the keyframes of the video. We were able to ascertain that the text on the badge is of the school “Shaheed Muktijoddha Girls' High School” (in Bengali: শহীদ মুক্তিযোদ্ধা গার্লস হাই স্কুল). We then compared the uniform with photos from a Facebook page related to the school and found a match with the uniforms from the same school in Mirpur, Dhaka.
2. School Headmaster Confirms Incident: Taking a cue, BOOM Bangladesh reached out to Khodeza Begum Rina, principal of Shaheed Muktijoddha Girls' High School. She confirmed that the incident happened in the school two years ago and was resolved back then. At present the involved students are attending school as usual.
Rina told BOOM Bangladesh, "There was no communal angle to the incident. Everyone involved and seen in the video are Muslims. The clash happened over a failed relationship, which led to the fight between two girls.”
(Additional Reporting: Ummay Ammara Eva, BOOM Bangladesh)