Scripted video misrepresented as genuine Bangladesh extortion scene
- Published on October 29, 2025 at 06:27
- 2 min read
- By Eyamin SAJID, AFP Bangladesh
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A wide range of extortion allegations have been reported against major political parties in Bangladesh as the South Asian nation gears up for crucial elections in early 2026. Bengali-language social media posts have recently circulated a video they falsely claimed showed a genuine scene of an Islamist party leader abusing a fruit vendor. However, the clip is staged for "social awareness raising", its creator told AFP.
"Jamaat leader shows off power. Bawled with the helpless plum fruit vendor. Such behaviour even before coming to power?" reads a Bengali-language Facebook post shared on October 3, 2025.
"Jamaat" refers to Jamaat-e-Islami, the Muslim-majority nation's largest Islamist party which was earlier banned from contesting polls after high court judges ruled its charter violated the secular constitution (archived link).
The interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus lifted the ban in August 2024.
The video included in the post depicts a man confronting a fruit vendor and demanding he pay a fee for setting up his business.
"Keep your eyes down. Will teach you a lesson," the man warns the vendor while a group of people watches. "Will pull out your eyes if you talk looking at me."
"Jamaat leader stole a plum," reads the Bengali-language text overlaid to the video.
The South Asian nation of 170 million people has been in political turmoil since Sheikh Hasina was ousted as prime minister by a student-led revolt in August 2024, and is gearing up for hotly contested elections slated for February 2026.
Local media have reported widespread allegations of extortion including by members of the major political party Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) (archived here).
In July, a man was beaten to death in broad daylight allegedly by BNP activists in the capital Dhaka for refusing to pay extortion money (archived link).
The video supposedly showing a Jamaat leader extorting money from a fruit vendor has been shared elsewhere on Facebook and on Instagram.
A reverse image search on Google using the video's keyframes found a higher quality version uploaded on the Facebook page Proyojon Tv on September 26, 2025 (archived link).
"What kind of behaviour does a petty leader have with a Plum vendor?" reads the caption.
A review of the history of the page found it has previously shared dozens of similar clips where the supposed official could be seen playing different roles (archived here, here and here).
AFP reached out to the owner of the Facebook page who confirmed the circulating clip has been misrepresented.
"It is a scripted content that we produced as part of social awareness raising initiatives," S M Kowser Alam said on October 22.
"Extortion by political leaders and activists is a common incident in Bangladesh. Depicting this social problem, we produced the video two years back."
A longer version of the video was earlier published on a different Facebook channel -- also run by Alam -- on February 13, 2022 (archived link). The scene ends with a man speaking directly to the camera.
"Whether you are a leader or anybody else, why are you doing such misbehaviour with these types of poor people. You should not behave in such a way under any circumstances," he says.
AFP has previously debunked posts that have falsely presented scripted clips as genuine.
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