A video showing a woman holding a cake on a cycle rickshaw being heckled aggressively by members of the public is being shared widely on the internet as an American woman being heckled in Bangladesh for not wearing a hijab.
BOOM found these claims to be false; we identified the woman as Bangladeshi actor Mishti Subas, who was heckled by the public for being a supporter of ousted leader Sheikh Hasina. According to local reports, she was cutting a cake at Dhaka University to celebrate Hasina's birthday, which generated public resentment.
Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina was ousted in August by student protestors, who were initially protesting for quota reforms. After many protestors were executed by authorities and Awami League supporters, the protests rapidly grew in intensity, eventually leading to Hasina resigning and fleeing the country. Since then, social media has been riddled with claims around attacks on the minority Hindu community - many of which have been found as false or misleading by BOOM.
A user on X going by the handle Hindutva Knight shared the viral video with the caption, "An American woman is heckled and harassed by Bangladeshis for not wearing Hijab. This is what free Bangladesh under the leadership of Nobel Laureate Younus looks like - A Global shame"
An archive of the above tweet can be viewed here.
The same claim was also shared with the video on Facebook, which can be viewed here.
Woman In Video Is Heckled For Supporting Ousted Leader
BOOM performed a series of keyword searches with "woman cake rickshaw heckled bangladesh", and came across a post on Instagram showing a similar scenario.
The caption of the post mentions that she is a Bangladeshi actress and model named Mishti Subas who "sparked controversy after cutting a cake to honor Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 78th birthday"
We performed more keyword searches in Bangla, and came across other videos of the same woman, wearing the exact same clothes, on YouTube.
One of the videos was shared by "Channel Shatkahon", titled, "What happened to this young woman who came to celebrate Sheikh Hasina's birthday." It shows the woman abusing those who attacked her, and saying in Bangla, "I can withstand this disrespect for the sake of my leader."
Yet another video on YouTube, shared by "Ittefaq Digital" - the online channel of Bangladeshi newspaper Daily Ittefaq - showed a longer version of the incident, where the woman could be seen standing with the cake, while being accosted by members of the public.
The video was titled, "A woman came to cut Sheikh Hasina's birthday cake in the canon's mouth, at Dhabi (Dhaka University)." Towards the beginning of the video, the woman can be heard saying while cutting the cake, "It's a good good good day, it's Sheikh Hasina's birthday."
The same was also reported by other local news outlets like Daily Inqalab, and SATV.