No, Photo Does Not Show Bangladesh Freedom Fighters Recreate 1971 Moment
BOOM found that the set of images were clicked 56 years apart and none of the women in the photographs were part of the Bangladesh Liberation War
A set of two images, one showing four Bangladeshi women sitting in a jeep with guns in the 1960s and another image recreating the same moment when the four were older, is viral with false claims misidentifying them as freedom fighters from the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.
BOOM found that the women in the set of photographs are related and not freedom fighters. The first image was clicked in 1961, ten years before the Bangladesh Liberation War and the same moment seen in the second image was recreated by one of the family members in 2017 when all four women got together for a family function.
The collage is circulating on Twitter with the caption: "Four Bangladeshi freedom fighters recreate their 1971 photograph in the same Willy's Jeep". Click here to view an archive of the tweet.
The same set of photos is also being shared on Facebook with captions mocking Bangladeshi women for wearing headscarves and following Islam, after gaining independence from Pakistan.
Click here, here and here to view Facebook posts.
Fact Check
BOOM checked user KJ Singh's tweet replies and found a tweet stating that the black and white image is from 1961.
Taking a cue from this, we ran a reverse image search on the same photograph and found a post from July 2013 on the page, Bangladesh Old Photo Archive.
The photo, captioned as, "Women are posing with gun in a village trip. Bangladesh (1965)," has been credited to one Renan Ahmed. Ahmed has also been tagged in the post.
We then checked Ahmed's public posts and found the same black-and-white image of the four women, shared in an obituary post by Ahmed in August, 2020. Ahmed's grandmother, Rokeya Ahmed, seen in both photographs, died on August 25, 2020. Ahmed stated that the black and white photograph was taken in 1961.
Other photographs of a young Rokeya Ahmed can be seen in the post below.
This shows that the image has been taken ten years before Bangladesh's Liberation War. -
BOOM reached out to Tasmia Nehreen Ahmed, Rokeya Ahmed's granddaughter, who confirmed, "This photo has nothing to do with the Liberation Was of Bangladesh. It was clicked by my grandfather Alauddin Ahmed. The ladies in the pictures are our grandmothers, two of whom have passed away recently. The recent picture was clicked during my cousin brother's wedding as the family thought it would be a great way to relive old memories. Somehow someone outside the family started the false claim that this was taken during the war, which is not true. My grandfather was a hobbyist photographer had merely taken this photograph to keep as a memorandum."
Further, in an interview by Bangladeshi news outlet News Bangla 24, Rokeya Ahmed's daughter-in-law Riffat Ahmed, clarifies that none of the women seen in the photograph were freedom fighters. "This is a personal photograph. My husband's grandfather Alauddin Ahmed and his family would go to a picnic twice a year. This photo is most probably from Khulna. After a hunting session and cooking, he told the women to sit and pose as if they were going hunting."
Speaking about the recent image, Riffat Ahmed said, "We created a before and after of this image in 2017 where all four women are present. Seen in the photograph are Ayesha Ahmed, Rokeya Ahmed, Rashida Ahmed, and Shahnara Ahmed."
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