Fact Check: Man destroys balloons sold by a young Muslim boy ahead of Republic Day? Here’s the truth

Hyderabad: As India marks its 77th Republic Day on January 26, a video claiming to show the ‘real conditions of ‘New India’ is making rounds on social media.

The 10-second-long viral video shows a man trying to attack a young boy wearing a skull cap, selling balloons on a busy street. The man is seen bursting the balloons as the bystanders are seen observing the encounter without intervening.

The video was shared on X, with the caption, “We should hold and strengthen the weary hands. We should not show our strength on the helpless! #NewIndia” (Translated from Kannada) (Archive)

The same video was reposted on X with the caption, “Celebrate the Republic Day #RepublicDayIndia”. This post is now deleted. (Archive)

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false. This video is from Bangladesh.

Using reverse image search of the viral video, we found a 16-second-long extended version of the video shared on Facebook on January 13. User ‘Amazing Collection24’ shared the video with the caption, “What happened to the little boy with the balloons?” (Translated from Bengali)

On the same day, the page also shared another video showing the same balloon seller and the man who had attacked him.

The video was captioned, “The balloon seller gave the little boy 1,000 taka.” (Translated from Bengali

In the video, the man—who is earlier seen attacking the boy—is later shown giving him some money after destroying the balloons. We zoomed in on the currency and found that it is different from Indian currency and closer to Bangladesh Taka.

This Facebook page also shared a link to a YouTube channel ‘@FOODBF’.

Both videos from the Facebook page are also shared on this YouTube Channel. You can find the videos here and here.

Given the sudden and dramatic turn of events in the video, it appears to have been created with the intention of generating engagement on social media and is likely scripted. However, we were unable to independently verify this.

Location of the video

In the first Facebook video, we noticed a street food stall in the background. The banner on the stall reads “INDIN PANE PURE” and includes a contact number. We contacted the number mentioned on the banner, and the seller shared the exact location of the stall.

The seller said the food stall is located opposite the ICT Towers, near the Dhaka Agargaon Election Building. Using Google Maps Street View, we verified the location by comparing the trees and buildings visible in the background. A visual comparison can be seen below.

When asked about the specific video, the seller said that many YouTubers frequently shoot videos at this location. She added that while she had heard about the incident involving a balloon seller being attacked from her husband, they were unsure whether it was a real incident or scripted.

Therefore, it is clear that the viral video is from Dhaka, Bangladesh, it does not show an incident that took place in India.