Posts falsely link old images to July 2025 Bangladesh protest
- Published on July 29, 2025 at 03:09
- 5 min read
- By Eyamin SAJID, AFP Bangladesh
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"Dressed in police uniforms, they are shooting ordinary people indiscriminately after shutting down the internet in Gopalganj," reads a Bengali-language Facebook post shared on July 16, 2025.
The attached photo shows armed policemen standing in a street.
The post was shared after clashes erupted in Hasina's hometown of Gopalganj on July 16 when members of her Awami League party tried to foil a rally by the National Citizens Party (NCP), made up of many students who spearheaded the uprising that toppled her government last year (archived link).
Human rights activists said security forces had fired indiscriminately during the unrest, killing at least five people.
A separate Facebook post on July 17 featured a photo collage of men holding firearms, with a caption that suggested it showed members of the Awami League in Gopalganj.
A separate video of police loading a man onto a police van surfaced on YouTube with the caption "Gopalganj" on July 17.
Hasina's son, Sajeeb Wazed, had also shared the clip alongside claims it showed police handling a protester that was killed in a "shooting", though his post has since been taken down (archived link).
Other posts on Instagram and YouTube also linked the visuals to the unrest in Gopalganj.
But reverse image searches showed the photos and video are old and unrelated to the clashes.
The photo of the armed police was published by local online outlet News Bangla in September 2022 in a report about a policeman who shot an activist during a rally by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to celebrate the organisation's founding (archived link).
"On September 1, during a clash with BNP leaders and activists in Narayanganj, Intelligence Bureau Sub-Inspector Mahfuzur Rahman Kanak picked up another policeman's rifle and shot him," the caption of the photo says.
The report says Kanak was removed from the intelligence force and transferred to the district police.
The photo of a man holding a firearm shared in the collage was published by Jago News in a report about pro-government groups using weapons against student protesters pushing for a reform of the quota system for public sector jobs in the southeastern port city of Chittagong on July 16, 2024 (archived link).
Those demonstrations eventually led to the wider anti-government uprising that year (archived link).
The men seen in the other three images used in the collage match those seen in a photo published by The Daily Star on July 17, 2024 about the same protest (archived link).
AFP found a higher resolution version of the video of a man being loaded onto a van in a Facebook post on June 4, 2025 (archived link).
"A robber was caught at Bhadughar Bus Stand cattle market and beaten up before handed over to the police," its caption says.
The Bhadughar Bus Stand is located in the eastern town of Brahmanbaria Upazila, about 170 kilometres (105 miles) from Gopalganj.
Mozaffar Hossain, an officer in-charge at the local Brahmanbaria Sadar Model Police Station told AFP on July 24 the video was filmed at the Bhadughar Bus Stand cattle market on June 4.
"The public caught the man red-handed when he attempted to steal a cow. He was handed over to us after being beaten by the people. Later we produced him before court," he said.
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