Video from Bangladesh falsely shared as man in burqa found with explosives in India

A video of policemen apprehending a man dressed in a burqa has been shared on social media. Facebook user Shashi Patil shared the clip and wrote that the video was for those who ask where the explosives in Pulwama came from. It amassed over 13,000 views at the time of writing.

Another user named Sujay Anu also posted the video claiming that a man was walking around in a burqa with gunpowder in his possession.

Several other Facebook users have amplified the clip.

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Fact-check

Alt News performed a reverse image search of a frame from the clip, which led us to a YouTube video from March 11, 2021. Bangladeshi YouTube channel Smile TV reported that police nabbed a man in Chittagong for smuggling drugs disguised as a pregnant woman. In fact, they had arrested two such smugglers.

The policemen in the video are wearing the Bangladeshi police uniform. A comparison of a publicly available image of Bangladeshi cops shows the similarities.

We also performed a keyword search and came across an article by Chittagong news outlet Cvoice24 dated March 9, 2021. It quoted the Office-in-Charge of Ravzan Police Station as saying that the police were stationed at a check post and were searching all passengers. They discovered that an individual seated inside an auto was not a woman but a man smuggling liquor in the guise of being pregnant.

A video from Bangladesh was thus, shared on Indian social media with the false claim that a man dressed in a burqa was smuggling explosives. Videos and pictures from Bangladesh have often been shared as India with misleading and false claims.