Fact Check: Bangladeshi bowler Mustafizur Rahman calls for IPL boycott? No, video is AI-manipulated
A viral video on social media claims to show Bangladeshi cricketer Mustafizur Rahman calling for a boycott of IPL after being released from KKR.
By - K Sherly Sharon
Claim:The video shows Bangladeshi cricketer Mustafizur Rahman announcing that he will never play IPL and asking others to boycott IPL too.
Fact:The claim is false. The video has been altered using AI.
Hyderabad: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) instructed Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) to release Bangladeshi bowler Mustafizur Rahman in view of the ongoing tensions between India and Bangladesh.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) team KKR is owned by Red Chillies Entertainment, associated with Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan. The franchise secured him for a record Rs 9.20 crore at the December auction.
On December 3, KKR took to social media platform X, to announce the release of Mustafizur Rahman.
In this context, a video showing Mustafizur speaking in Bengali and asking people to boycott IPL is going viral on social media.
In the video, he could be allegedly heard saying, “Thank you to the people of Bangladesh who love me so much. Boycott IPL. I will never play in the IPL again. Insulting me is an insult to my country.”
The video was shared on Facebook with the title, “Boycott IPL, boycott!” (Translated from Bengali) (Archive)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the viral claim is false. The video is manipulated using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Keyword searches did not yield any news reports or credible social media accounts claiming that the Bangladeshi bowler called for a boycott of IPL after being released from KKR.
Where is the video from?
Using a reverse image search of the viral video keyframes, we found another video of Mustafizur Rahman talking to the camera. The surroundings and his facial expressions in the video seemed similar to those of the viral video, except for his statement.
This video was shared on Instagram by user bdcrictime.com on December 16, 2025. The caption reads, “I am very happy to be a part of Kolkata Knight Riders, see you soon: Mustafiz”.
In the video, Mustafizur can be heard speaking in Bengali, saying, “Hi KKR fans, I am Mustafizur Rahman. I am happy and excited to be a part of the KKR team. See you soon.”
Analysis of the video
A side-by-side comparison of screenshots from the viral video and the Instagram video reveals that the Instagram video of Mustafizur Rahman has been used to modify and create the viral video.
We found that the voice of Mustafizur in this video is different from his voice in videos available online. The lip movements also look lagged and the texture of the video seems too smooth. These are some usual indications of the presence of content altered using AI.
Using Hive Moderation, an AI detection tool, we found that the video is likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content. The tool determined the aggregate score of the video as 99.3 per cent.
Hiya Deepfake Audio Detector also determined that the audio of the viral video is AI-generated with less than 1 per cent matches to live human markers.
Therefore, NewsMeter concludes that the viral claim is false.
