A video shared by several social media users claims to depict the lynching of a Hindu man by members of the Muslim community. “मरने वाला हिन्दू और मारने वाला मुसलमान है… शायद इसलिए बुद्धिजीवियों की नजर में ये लिंचिंग नहीं है (The one who died is Hindu and the one who killed him is Muslim. Perhaps this is why intellectuals did not see this lynching.)” – tweeted Pushpendra Kulshrestha (@Nationalist_Om).
क्या ये लिंचिंग नहीं है???
मरने वाला हिन्दू और मारने वाला मुसलमान है…
शायद इसलिए बुद्धिजीवियों की नजर में ये लिंचिंग नहीं है😡 pic.twitter.com/jGUlkPpbpA
— Pushpendra Kulshrestha (@Nationalist_Om) June 25, 2019
Kulshrestha has been found circulating several cases of misinformation recently – video of a man offering Namaz on Malaysian road was falsely portrayed to be from India; a photo of a young girl from a 2017 BBC footage on Rohingyas was shared with a false and communal claim.
Several other users have shared the same video tweeted by Kulshrestha.
मरने वाला हिन्दू और मारने वाला मुसलमान है.
तो इसे बुद्धिजीवी गैंग, लिंचिंग नही कहेगी देखिए pic.twitter.com/6lGLUo0p2m
— नैना 100%fb (@Bharati0162) June 25, 2019
It was also circulated by many on Facebook.
Video from Bangladesh
The video actually depicts a 2017 incident from Bangladesh. On April 1, 2017, assailants killed Abu Syed and seriously injured Md Ali. The two men were accused in the murder of Jubo League leader Monir Hossain Sarkar and were absconding. This incident occurred in Titas subdivision of Comilla district in Bangladesh and was also covered by local news website called Comilla-r-Kagoj which translates to ‘Comilla’s Newspaper’ in English.
Another Bangladeshi news portal Jagonews24.com talks about the incident in a March 2018 article about political murders in Titas. The report says that Sarkar was shot dead on November 8, 2016, in Gouripur Bazar. Six months later, his supporters sought revenge for the murder and hacked to death Abu Syed and Md Ali.
Alt News contacted Bangladeshi journalists from Comilla district who corroborated the events and confirmed that the video pertains to the lynching of Md Ali and Abu Syed. The attack was sparked by internal conflicts between different factions of Jubo League, the youth wing of the ruling Awami League. Monir Hussain Sarkar was the then Ziarkandi Union Parishad chairman under Titas Upazila and Upazila Jubo League secretary. Md Ali and Abu Syed, who were killed for his murder, were also Jubo League members.
A video of the incident was uploaded on YouTube on April 2, 2017. This shows the same scenes as in the video currently viral.
Alt News has debunked this video several times in the past when it was viral as Hindu killed by Muslims in West Bengal and Bihar. In May 2017, it was also viral as Kashmiri students killing a CRPF jawan. Recently, several videos from around the world – Sri Lanka. Malaysia, Guatemala – were shared on Indian social media with a false and communal narrative.
