A video of an altercation between villagers and stunt bikers in West Bengal's Malda has surfaced on social media with a false and communal claim that Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants are extorting money from Hindus on highways in rural Bengal. The video shows footage recorded from an action camera attached to a rider who speeding on a highway.
BOOM found that the riders were intercepted by a group of locals who accused them of overspeeding on the highway in Malda's Chanchal area.
The video was shared on X by a right-wing handle with the caption, "The terror of #Bangladeshi Muslims in rural Bengal. Got this video from one of my Bengali Hindu friend who were forcibly stopped on a highway and extorted by these illegal bangladeshi Muslims."
Click here for an archive of the X post.
Another X post with a Hindi caption claimed, "Look at the audacity of illegal Bangladeshis, they are stopping people's vehicles on the road in Bengal and collecting money and all this is happening right under the nose of the government!"
Post archive.
Fact Check: Locals Stop Bikers For Overspeeding
BOOM ran a reverse image search on one of the keyframes of the video and found a YouTube channel Pradhan Rider 0.1. We found the longer version of the video with the title 'aj to ladai ho gai' (today we had a fight) uploaded in August this year.
The video shows a group of riders reaching a highway stretch to perform stunts on their bikes. It documents visuals shot from an action camera of a vlogger who, along with a group, reaches an empty stretch of a road to perform stunts. Riders can be seen reaching a speed of up to 140 km/h on the highway on their bikes and performing wheelies and stoppies. The vlogger can be heard calling fellow riders by their names Shamim, Masum, Sajjad.
In the later half of the video we can see the viral portion where locals intercept the bikes with a bicycle and accuses the riders of overspeeding and putting life of the villagers and children at risk. Agitated men can be heard saying in Bangla, "There are shops and chowks here. How can you speed your bike here." One out of them asks the riders to step aside and says, "If an accident happens here, will you take responsibility?"
In the longer version of the video, there is no mention of exchange of money between the riders and the villagers.
We then reached out to one of the riders seen in the video. Samiul told BOOM that the incident happened on National Highway 34 of Malda. "The video is almost three to four months old. Many riders had gathered on the highway near a village Sahurgachi in Chanchal area of Malda to perform wheelies and other stutnts. This was creating unnecessary noise and disturbance for the adjoining village residents. So the locals came and stopped us. They scolded us and asked us to leave."
Samiul also told BOOM that no money was demanded by the villagers from the bikers. "This is not true. The locals there rebuked us and asked us not to practise bike stunts in the area as there are schools and houses nearby. Neither did they extort money from us nor did was the police called," Samiul told BOOM.
Samiul further told BOOM that the locals and the riders were Muslims. "Most of the riders who accompanied us were Muslims. The locals who stopped us were also Muslims. It is not true that Hindu riders in particular were stopped by Muslims."