Claim
A photo of an ISKCON devotee in Mayapur, West Bengal serving food to Muslim men during Ramzan has been revived with a false claim that it shows a Hindu priest who was killed by a Muslim mob in Bangladesh. Bangladesh was rocked by communal violence during Durga Puja in October 2021, which claimed 11 lives across the country that time. However, one of the images circulating is unrelated to the violence. One such out of context Facebook post, has been captioned in Hindi as, “Brutal Killing. This is Swami Nimai Das ji of Bangladesh’s Iskcon Temple who had arranged Iftar for Muslims for 30 days. And those Muslims, by invading the Iskcon temple, had killed him brutally. And Let’s feed milk to the Snakes!” (Original Text in Hindi: #निर्मम_हत्या ये है बांग्लादेश इस्कान मंदिर के स्वामी निताई दास जी, इन्होने रोजा में लगातार 30 दिन तक मुस्लिमों के लिए इफ्तार का आयोजन किया था और वहीँ मुस्लिमों ने इस्कान मंदिर में घुस कर स्वामी जी का निर्मम हत्या कर दिया और सांप को दूध पिलाओ!!!)
Fact
BOOM debunked the same claim when it was viral in October 2021. We ran a reverse image search and found that the image was uploaded on Ucannews on July 4, 2016. The caption with the photo reads 'A monk from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness offers sweetmeats to Muslims during Iftar at the Hindu group's temple in Mayapur on 22 June. (Photo by Raghu Nath)'. According to the report, an iftar was held for the people from Muslim community at the ISKCON Mayapur (West Bengal) in 2016. The Muslim men had also offered the evening prayers inside the temple complex after ending their ramzan fast. Speaking to BOOM in 2021, ISKCON National director of communications Yudhisthir Govind Das confirmed that the photo is from ISKCON Mayapur (West Bengal). "I was present in the iftar organised on the ISKCON Mayapur complex in 2016. The man seen in the picture is Ivan Antić, a native of Pula in Croatia. Ivan's deeksha name is Nitayi Das," Das told BOOM. Das also told us that Ivan had returned to Croatia before the Coronavirus pandemic. However, he is safe and alive, Das added at that time.