Video of student's arrest in Bangladesh falsely shared as slain Hindu man's 'last moments'
- Published on December 30, 2025 at 08:18
- 3 min read
- By Akshita KUMARI, Eyamin SAJID, AFP India, AFP Bangladesh
Videos of the assault of a minority Hindu garment worker accused of blasphemy in Bangladesh have spread widely online and sparked outrage in neighbouring India, but footage of a man being dragged away by police officers does not show his final moments. The clip in fact surfaced a month before the killing of Dipu Chandra Das, and police in Dhaka told AFP the man seen in the video is in fact a student at a nearby college who was later let go.
"The last video of Dipu Chandra Das before his death, surrounded by Bangladeshi policemen," reads part of an X post shared on December 22, 2025.
The post shares a video of a group of police officers dragging a man through a crowd. Hindi-language text overlaid on the video repeats the claim.
The video also includes two pictures of Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu garment factory worker who was killed following allegations of blasphemy in Mymensingh, north of the capital Dhaka, on December 18 (archived link).
Fuelled in part by growing anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh, Das's killing coincided with a spate of violence triggered by the death of Sharif Osman Hadi, a key student leader in the pro-democracy uprising in 2024.
Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion said there was no evidence of blasphemy in the case and arrested ten people in connection with Das's killing (archived link).
The incident also triggered protests in neighbouring India, where officials have demanded the protection of all minorities in Bangladesh (archived link).
Posts sharing the purported video of Das's last moments also appeared on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and X.
But the deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Masud Alam told AFP on December 28 the man in the video is not Das.
"My fellow police officers caught him sensing a protester. But we freed him after learning he was a student of nearby Dhaka College," Alam said.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video found the same video had surfaced in news reports a month before Das was killed.
Bangladeshi media outlet Bhorer Kagoj published the video on its Facebook and YouTube pages on November 18, 2025 with a Bengali-language title that reads, "What happened to this Dhaka College student?" (archived link).
Another Bangladesh media outlet, NPB News, shared a longer version of the footage on its Facebook page, which shows the man repeatedly saying he is a Dhaka College student and not involved in the protests (archived link).
At one point, he identifies himself as Abdul Momin, while the jersey he is wearing bears the logo of Dhaka College on the front and the word "Momin" on the back.
Keyword searches found a report by the Prothom Alo news site on November 17, which stated police clashed with protesters who went to demolish what remains of the residence of Bangladesh's founding father Sheikh Mujibir Rahman (archived link).
The protests followed the verdict in the case against his daughter and ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina over crimes against humanity committed during last year's mass uprising.
AFP has previously debunked misinformation around the unrest in Bangladesh.
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