Scripted video from Bangladesh showing fake doctor ‘treating’ patients viral

A video is viral on social media which shows a man touching and patting the bellies and backs of several persons who are seemingly seeking treatment from him for some ailments. It is being shared with the claim that people were getting examined by a fake medical practitioner. In the posts, users referred to the man as ‘Maulana Sahab’ or ‘Mullah’.

Verified X user Raushan Sinha, who shares and amplifies communal disinformation on social media on a regular basis, shared this clip stating that the ‘patients’ were to be blamed for the ‘idiocy’ of visiting such quack doctors. At the time of this article being written, the video has accumulated more than 30 Lakh views and has been reshared over 3,200 times.

What kind of idiocy is it? I blame these women for going to such frauds…

And if something goes wrong, everybody will blame the govt..pic.twitter.com/cLgBj0GFX6

— Mr Sinha (@MrSinha_) July 4, 2024

Other X users have also made the claim with sarcastic jibes at the ‘treatment procedure’.

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Fact Check 

We noticed a watermark on the viral video which said ‘Peace TV’. Taking a cue from this, we ran a relevant keyword search, which led us to this Facebook video, uploaded by a Facebook profile called ‘Peace Tv BD‘. The profile, run from Barisal, Bangladesh, has 14 Lakh followers, and describes itself as a ‘Media/News company.’

The video was shared on January 30, 2024.

We went through this video, which is much longer than the clip that went viral across social media platforms. The viral part occurs from the 0:03 minute-mark onward, and goes on till around the 5:19-minute mark.

The last two frames of the video show a cautionary message and a title card, respectively. The message in Bengali says: “It is your responsibility to protect yourself from such ‘babas'”. The title card says: “Directed by Peace Multimedia”.

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These suggest that the video is a scripted one made for awareness purposes.

The Facebook page also has a a link to a YouTube channel, which shared the same video. The channel describes itself as an organisation from Bangladesh, covering, among other things, ‘short film(s)’ and ‘Islamic drama(s)’.

We also noticed that the other videos uploaded by this channel dealt with similar social and domestic issues, ranging from infidelity to gender injustices, as well as instances of imposters getting caught and punished.

Moreover, the actor who is depicted as the fake doctor in the viral video can be seen in several other videos from the channel, donning different avatars.

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This proves that the videos are dramatic ones and do not depict real incidents.

It can be concluded that the viral video of the fake doctor is scripted and from Bangladesh.

Prantik Ali is an intern at Alt News.