Video of man beaten for harassing women in Bangladesh shared with anti-Muslim claims in India
- Published on May 19, 2026 at 08:46
- 2 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
Footage of a group of women beating a man with slippers has circulated online in Hindu-majority India alongside false claims it showed a Muslim man trying to seduce women into converting to Islam as part of a wider campaign. In fact, the footage was taken in neighbouring Bangladesh's Dhaka University and shows women hitting a man accused of harassing a female student before he was handed over to the police.
"A Bangladeshi jihadist was giving false advice to Hindu girls at Delhi University to lure them into love jihad. Then, the female students mustered courage, caught the jihadist red-handed, and beat him with shoes and slippers. They then handed him over to the police," reads a Hindi-language Facebook post shared on April 28, 2026.
The attached video -- viewed more than 200,000 times -- shows a crowd surrounding a car as women hit a man inside with slippers.
Far-right Hindu groups in India coined the term "love jihad" in reference to a supposed campaign by Muslim men to seduce Hindu women into converting to Islam (archived link).
Muslims are a minority in India, where critics say they face discriminatory treatment under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist administration (archived link).
The footage has spread elsewhere on Facebook and Instagram with the false claim, but a reverse image search using keyframes from the video found it was not filmed in India.
A similar video of the incident was posted on YouTube by Bangladeshi news outlet Banglanews24 on April 26 titled, "Dhaka University students pelt shoes at man accused of harassing a student" (archived link).
Other Bangladeshi news outlets reported on the incident that day, saying the man was handed over to the police after he was accused of sexually harassing women at Dhaka University (archived here and here).
Mohammad Mahbub Quaisar, an assistant proctor at the University of Dhaka, told AFP on May 14: "The video shows a perpetrator who allegedly teased a female student at the business faculty of the university on April 26, 2026."
The official said he was captured by other students at the faculty and later handed over to the Shahbag police station nearby.
"We have punished the accused under a mobile court and sent him to jail," Md. Moniruzzaman, the officer-in-charge of a police station near the university campus, told AFP on May 18.
The area seen in the circulating video matches a photo of Dhaka University's business school uploaded to Google Maps (archived link).
AFP has also debunked another "love jihad" conspiracy claim.
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