Bangladeshi police say video of officers revealing political parties' plot is 'absolutely false, AI-generated'
- Published on December 2, 2025 at 10:05
- 3 min read
- By Eyamin SAJID, AFP Bangladesh
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After a series of explosions and unrest across Bangladesh in November 2025 blamed on the outlawed Awami League party of ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, an AI-generated video was shared in social media posts falsely claiming police had uncovered a plot by other political parties to set fire to buses and blame it on the former leader's supporters. An officer in the video told AFP they made no such announcement, calling the circulating clip "absolutely false".
"Resignation of 50 coordinators and leak of secret information about Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir attacks planned for the 13th," reads the Bengali-language caption of a Facebook video shared on November 12, 2025.
The term "coordinators" refers to students who spearheaded the uprising that toppled the Awami League government of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024 (archived link).
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) are widely seen as frontrunners in elections slated for February 2026, while the Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir (Shibir) is the student wing of the country's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami.
The video appears to show a police officer at a press conference saying in Bengali: "We have information that more than 50 coordinators have resigned and they have supported the Awami League's 'lockdown' programme.
"Our intel informed us that BNP and Shibir will set fire to buses tomorrow, November 13th, and they will blame the Awami League for the sabotage."
The video was also shared in similar Facebook posts as Bangladesh's capital Dhaka was rocked by a series of explosions in November caused mainly by petrol bombs hurled at everything from buildings linked to the government of interim leader Muhammad Yunus to buses and Christian sites (archived link).
Bangladesh has been in political turmoil since the end of Hasina's autocratic rule, and violence has marred campaigning for the first polls in the South Asian country of 170 million people since her overthrow in August 2024.
Hasina's Awami League had also called for a nationwide "lockdown" on November 13, when a verdict was expected in the former prime minister's closely watched crimes against humanity trial (archived link). She was convicted in absentia on November 17 and sentenced to death (archived link).
But there have been no official reports of the police saying there were plans by political parties to launch arson attacks and blame it on the outlawed Awami League.
Months-old police briefing
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video found a corresponding image used in a report by local newspaper Jugantor on February 22 (archived link).
The report says the Tangail District police were holding a press conference about a robbery and an alleged rape case on an inter-district bus.
A further keyword search led to a report about the press conference published by local television channel Somoy TV on the same day (archived link).
The officer speaking has a different voice to the one heard in the falsely shared clip.
"We were able to arrest the trio from the Savar area. We were able to arrest the looter and recover the looted mobiles," he says.
The officer seen on the left of the falsely shared video, Additional Superintendent Md Robiul Islam, told AFP on November 30 that they did not mention any coordinators resigning or a plot by political parties (archived link).
"It is absolutely false and AI-generated," he said.
AFP ran the clip through the Deepfake-o-meter tool developed by the University at Buffalo which found its likelihood of being AI-generated to be 100 percent (archived link).
AFP has debunked a slew of misinformation stemming from the unrest in Bangladesh.
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