A disturbing video of an attack on an accused in Bangladesh's Comilla district is being shared with a false communal spin that the Muslim men are lynching a Hindu man. The video is being shared with a false narrative in light of the recent reported lynching of Tabrez Ansari, a 24-year-old man, in Jharkhand.
Viewed more than 71,000 times at the time of writing this article, the video has been captioned as, 'Is this not lynching? The dying is a Hindu and the killers are Muslims. That is why it isn't a case of lynching for analysts.' (Hindi caption: क्या ये लिंचिंग नहीं है??? मरने वाला हिन्दू और मारने वाला मुसलमान है... शायद इसलिए बुद्धिजीवियों की नजर में ये लिंचिंग नहीं है)
The 12-second clip documents a gory sight of a group of five men attacking the victim with a large stone.
Warning: Viewers' Discretion Advised.
The video was doing the rounds on social media with a similar communal narrative earlier. A post, shared six months ago, falsely claimed that the incident was from West Bengal. It has been captioned as, ‘Bengal: A Muslim mob quashes a Hindu with a stone’
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on the video key frames and found the video is originally from Bangladesh. We were directed to the same video on YouTube, which has been captioned as 'Chairman Monir's murder accused hacked to death.'
The video was uploaded on April, 2017.
BOOM found corroborating news reports from mainstream Bangladeshi news portals, which reported the incident.
Abu Sayyed (28), an accused in the murder of Monir Hossain, chairman, Union Parishad, was hacked to death by unidentified in Daudkandi Upazila, while another accused Mohammed Ali (35) was seriously injured.
Monir Hossain, an Awami League leader, was shot dead by assailants in Comilla, in 2016.