Fact Check: Viral video does not show Hindu teacher being humiliated in Bangladesh

A video circulating widely on social media shows a group of young men stapling cigarette packets onto the shirt of a middle-aged man and pouring water on him. The accompanying claim suggests that this man is a Hindu teacher in Bangladesh who was humiliated and forced to resign.

Sharing the video, an X user wrote, “Another Hindu teacher in Bangladesh has been insulted by Muslim students he once taught and was forced to resign. Every day, thousands of Hindus in Bangladesh are being pressured to sign resignation letters. They aim to remove all 2.5 million Hindus working in Bangladesh.” (Archive)

Fact Check

NewsMeter found the claim false as the video shows a Muslim executive engineer of Chapainawabganj Municipality being harassed.

Upon conducting a reverse image search of the video’s keyframes, we found a photo of the same man, along with one of the youths seen in the video, in a report published by the Bangladeshi news portal bdnews24.com on August 21. The report identifies the man in the video as Taufiq Islam, an executive engineer at Chapainawabganj Municipality. Islam was forced to resign after students, led by Ismail Hossain Siraji, an adviser to the coordinators of the anti-quota student movement, found cigarette packets in his office drawer.

The youths also accused Islam of consuming drugs. Following the incident, Islam fell ill and had to be hospitalised. The report further mentions that the young men pressured two more municipal officials to write resignation letters on blank paper. Fearing for their safety, the officers stopped attending the office.

We also found a video report published on the Bangladeshi YouTube channel Swadesh Pratidin on August 19, detailing the forced resignations of officials in Chapainawabganj Municipality.

After the 0:35 mark, the video shows Taufiq Islam falling ill and being taken to the hospital after being humiliated and forced to resign by the youths. The report further mentions that the students confronted Executive Officer Mamunur Rashid and Accountant Ahsan Hossain about irregularities and corruption in the Chapainawabganj Municipality, ultimately compelling them to resign.

Several other Bangladeshi media outlets reported the incident with the same details. (Read the reports here and here.)

Hence, we conclude that the video does not depict a Hindu teacher or a Hindu government employee in Bangladesh being humiliated and forced to resign. The claim is false.