A graphic image of a school-going boy's dead body from Bangladesh is circulating among Indian social media users with a false communal claim that the victim - a Hindu, was murdered by a group of Muslims.
BOOM found that the photo is from an incident from Bangladesh's Khulna district where a group of students killed their schoolmate, Nirob Mondal. One student among the five accused is Muslim and the rest are Hindus. We reached out to Khulna Police who confirmed that the incident does not have any communal angle.
The image is viral with a caption in Hindi which translates to, "It is a sin to be a Hindu in Bangladesh!! This is Nirob Mondal, it was his fault that he was a Hindu!! In Bangladesh, Mohammad Sohail and his friends together killed Nirob Mandal, a Hindu school boy."
(Original Text in Hindi: बांग्लादेश में हिन्दू होना पाप है !! ये निरोब मंडल है , इसकी गलती थी कि ये एक हिन्दू था !! बांग्लादेश में मोहम्मद सोहेल और उसके दोस्तों ने मिलकर स्कूल के एक हिंदू लड़के निरोब मंडल को जान से मार दिया।)
(Trigger warning: The image is disturbing.)
Click here to view the tweet.
The picture is also circulating on Facebook with a similar communal claim.
Similar posts on Facebook can be seen here, here and here.
Fact Check
BOOM performed a related keywords search in Bengali on Google and found a news report from Joynewsbd published on February 4, 2023, reporting about the incident.
As per the report, the incident took place at Dumuria upazila in Bangladesh's Khulna district where a few students from Gutudia Secondary School killed Nirob Mondal, a class 7 student from the same school. The accused took Nirob to an empty room on February 2 near their school, tied him there and later, killed him.
The accused also demanded a ransom of around 30 lakhs in Bangladeshi rupee on phone from Nirob's father Shekhar Mondal. Nirob's father then informed the police about the incident. The police tracked the phone call and arrested the accused who made the phone call. They later received a confession from the accused and arrested the rest of the students involved in the case.
We also found other Bangladeshi news articles related to the incident mentioning statements from local police officials. According to a report from Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, the police also recovered the body of Nirob Mondal.
The article states that the police produced all the accused before the Khulna Judicial Magistrate Court and the students were later sent to the correctional facility after recording their confessions. The students confessed that they committed the crime after being inspired by TV serial Crime Patrol.
The reports mentioned the name and age of the accused. However, BOOM has withheld the names of the accused as they are juveniles. As per the names mentioned in the news reports, four of the accused are Hindus and one is a Muslim.
BOOM also reached out to Investigation-in-charge of Dumuria police station Mukto Roy Chowdhury for further confirmation. Chowdhury denied the communal angle to the case and said, "One of the accused is Muslim and rest of them are Hindus." He also confirmed that the viral photo was taken during the recovery of the body.
(With Inputs From Shoeb Abdullah, BOOM Bangladesh)