Video of a ‘Murder’ From WB Shared With a False Communal Claim

The video is being widely shared on social media with the claim that ‘Hindutva goons’ are burying muslims. 

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

CLAIM

Amid the violence in parts of Delhi, a video which shows a child and a woman being dug out is being widely shared on social media with an insinuation that the two were buried alive by Hindus.

‘Muslims are being buried alive in India,’ a tweet by a Pakistani user read.

(Trigger warning: Visuals in the tweet are graphic in nature.)

We came across the same video on a website named Republic of Buzz.

TRUE OR FALSE?

False.

The story is being shared with a false communal narrative. In reality, it is a video from West Bengal’s Islampur where a man, who has been identified as Akbar Ali, has been accused of burying his wife and daughter alive following a quarrel.

WHAT’S THE TRUTH?

On conducting a reverse image search using relevant keywords, we came across a video on YouTube titled “মাটি খুড়ে পাওয়া গেলো শিশু ও তার মা || ইসলামপুর” [Translation: The baby and her mother were found in the ground Islampur].

A YouTube user ‘Er. Afratul Haque’ shared the video on 30 January 2020 with the same visuals as that of the viral video. The user suggested that the video was from Islampur in West Bengal.

We then searched on Google with keywords ‘mother, baby buried Islampur’ and came across an article by Ei Samay, a Bengali-language daily from The Times Group, titled “ স্ত্রী ও সন্তানকে খুন করে পুঁতে দিল যুবক” [Translation: The young man murdered his wife and children] which suggested that this was a case of alleged murder.

According to the daily, the incident took place in West Bengal’s Islampur in Uttar Dinajpur district where a man named Akbar Ali allegedly murdered his wife and daughter and buried them in the ground.

The bodies of his wife Nurjahan Khatun and his daughter Rezwana were then dug out in the presence of a magistrate. The residents allege that Ali had not been on good terms with his wife for a fairly long time and thus, a prolonged quarrel ended up with murder.

Evidently, a case of a family dispute has been given a communal angle.

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