Sex workers beaten up in Dhaka: Video falsely viral as attack on Hindus for not wearing burqa

A video is viral on social media which shows a man in a blue T-shirt and carrying a stick, chasing and attacking at least two women in the busy streets of Bangladesh. The video is recorded by a second unidentified person following the assailant. It is being claimed by several users on social media that this man was beating up Hindu women for not wearing the burqa. The video has gone viral amid a slew of reports of communal violence against Hindu minorities in Bangladesh.

X-verified user @rajasolank71070 posted the video with a caption in Hindi, which, when translated into English, reads: “Look at the condition of girls in Bangladesh, Hindu girls who are walking on the road without burqa, how a fanatic jihadi Muslim youth is beating them in the middle of the road. Wake up you lazy people before this happens in India.” (Archive)

बांग्लादेश में लड़कियों की हालत देखिए, जो हिंदू लड़कियां बिना बुर्के के सड़क पर चल रही हैं, उन्हें कैसे एक कट्टर जिहादी मुस्लिम युवक बीच सड़क पर उनकी पिटाई कर रहा है
इससे पहले ये सब भारत में हो जग जाओ आलसियों pic.twitter.com/8kUqVhPUGI

— बकरी वाले मौलाना (बकरी न्यूज़) (@rajasolank71070) September 11, 2024

Retired Indian Navy officer Sandeep Dhawan (@InsightGL) also shared the video on X with the same claim. In his tweet, he parallels the democratic decline in Bangladesh to the patriarchal climate of Afghanistan, and asserts that Hindus are living under a state of threat and fear in Bangladesh. At the time of this article being written, the post has accumulated 7.8 Lakh views and has been re-shared some 8,500 times. (Archive)

-Welcome to #Bangladesh a new Afghanistan
-Women are beaten if not wearing burka
-Durga Puja to stop 5 times a day to give way for Namaz
–#Hindus are living under threat & fear
-But we have #Indian leaders going to the West & giving baseless fake statements just to grab power pic.twitter.com/bG6xm3xtd5

— Insightful Geopolitics (@InsightGL) September 12, 2024

X-verified user @jpsin1, who posts disinformation on a regular basis, also shared the video with the viral claim that a ‘Jihadi Islamist youth’ has been patrolling the streets and beating up Hindu women for not wearing the burqa. (Archive)

Look at the condition of Hindu girls and women in Bangladesh,

Jihadi Islamist youth patrolling the streets And the Hindu girls or Hindu women who are walking on the streets without burqa are being beaten badly.

See how a radical Jihadi Muslim youth is beating Hindu women in… pic.twitter.com/1JXRaK50Yj

— 🇮🇳Jitendra pratap singh🇮🇳 (@jpsin1) September 12, 2024

Several other users on X also shared this video with the same claim.

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Fact Check

Alt News ran a reverse image search on one of the key frames from the viral video, and came across this Facebook video from August 30. The post, which is in Bengali, requests viewers not to leap to conclusions before watching the entire clip, besides exhorting them to take part in the ‘protests.’ Moreover, it is mentioned that the video is from an area named ‘Shyamali Square’, in Bangladesh.

Taking a cue from this, we ran a relevant keyword search in Bengali. This led us to a report published by Dhaka-based daily Prothom Alo on September 1, which talks of a series of attacks on sex workers of Bangladesh by unidentified youths. Some of these videos, documenting the thrashing of sex workers, have been uploaded on social media. Bangladesh social welfare ministry advisor Sharmin S Murshid has also been quoted by the report, where he condemns the incident, calling it a ‘violation of human rights.’

We noticed that the screenshot attached in the report by Prothom Alo carries a watermark, attributing the video to a certain ‘HM Rasel Sultan.’

Taking a cue from this, we tried locating his Facebook profile. On going through his profile, we noticed that a similar video had been uploaded on September 7, where he can be heard intimidating two women, and asking them questions about their profession.

Moreover, the user has posted a screenshot of a Facebook post made by exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin on September 2, where she condemns such acts of vigilante justice on sex workers. He admits that he had carried out the ‘protest’, and expresses his pleasure on being noticed by Nasrin, whom she refers to in a derogatory manner. (Archive)

To sum up, a video is viral on social media with the false claim that ‘Jihadis’ are beating up Hindu women in Bangladesh for not wearing the burqa. On investigating, Alt News found the claim was baseless. In reality, the video shows a man named Rasel Sultan, rounding up sex workers on the street in the Shyamali Square locality of Dhaka, and thrashing them, in a call to put an end to prostitution.

Prantik Ali is an intern at Alt News.