Tragic deaths of mother & children in Purnea, Bihar, falsely viral as attack on Hindu family in Bangladesh

Trigger Warning: Murder, Suicide, Violence Against Children

The story uses only screenshots in view of the graphic nature of the actual video.

A video is viral on the social media showing distressing footage of the lifeless bodies of three children and a woman. Users have claimed that this video is from Bangladesh, and depicts the brutality of ‘radical Islamists’ who apparently attacked the village of Giripur, in Mymensingh. Such claims have been viral against the backdrop of the unrest that has engulfed the country since the abdication of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, continuing to the present day, under the interim leadership of Mohammed Yunus.

X user @Sanatan Voice (@SanatanVoice_in) shared the video, claiming that ‘a mother and her three young children were injured in the attack.’ The tweet was later deleted. (Archive)

The X account Megh Updates (@MeghUpdates) shared the viral video, claiming that ‘radical Islamists’ had attacked the homes of Hindu residents in Mymensingh, committing rape and vandalism. The tweet had managed to accumulate more than 33,000 views and over 750 re-shares, but was eventually deleted by the user. (Archive)

Readers should note that Alt News has previously debunked several false claims by this user, including misinformation related to the Bangladesh situation. 

Another verified X user, Sunanda Roy (@SaffronSunanda) shared the viral video, claiming that Muslim perpetrators had raped a woman and attacked her children, leaving them badly injured. At the time of this article being written, the post has garnered more than 19,000 views, and has been re-shared over 870 times. (Archive) 

Another X user, Amitabh Chaudhary (@MithilaWaala), who has been called out by Alt News for sharing disinformation on social media on several occasions, also shared the viral video with the same claim. (Archive)

Below are a few more instances of the same claim being made along with the viral video.

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Fact Check

To verify the claim, we ran a relevant keyword search on Google, which led us to a news report by Times of India, from November 7. In the report, it is mentioned that on November 6, a 32-year-old woman by the name of Babita Devi had killed her three children, Riya, Suraj, and Sujeet, aged 8, 5, and 3, respectively. This had taken place at Kilpara village in Purnea district of Bihar.

After hanging her children from nooses inside their house, she had allegedly killed herself. During preliminary investigation, it was revealed that the woman was mentally unstable, and was on medication.

Taking a cue from this, we checked if any video or footage from this unfortunate event in Bihar could be found on the internet. A keyword search in Hindi led us to this YouTube video uploaded on November 7. We are not embedding the video in view of the graphic content.

Comparing the viral video with footage from the YouTube report, we could ascertain that the footage of the dead woman and her three children showed the woman from Purnea identified as Babita Devi, and her three children, whom she had killed before killing herself.

Further, we came across another YouTube video, uploaded by a news outlet called Khabar Seemanchal, which reported on the same event from Purnea, Bihar.

We were also able to find news reports by India TV News, ETV Bharat News, Aaj Tak, etc, that corroborated the circumstances under which the tragic event had transpired on November 6.

To sum up, the video that is viral on social media showing distressing footage of the dead bodies of a woman and three children are not linked in any way to any incident in Bangladesh. It is from Purnea, Bihar. The claims of the footage showing the aftermath of an attack on Hindus are entirely false.