A disturbing video of a man groping a school girl and forcefully kissing her in Bangladesh's Dinajpur is being shared by right-wing Indian X users without specifying that the incident did not occur in India.
The CCTV footage shows visuals of a man dressed in a thobe or jubba and a skull cap, grabbing a girl in a deserted street and forcefully kissing her. He then runs away, as the girl starts shouting. The later part of the video shows the man trying to plead not guilty and hide behind another woman presumed to be his mother, as cops and locals apprehend him.
The video has been picked up by several Indian right-wing X accounts.
Radharaman Das, vice president and spokesperson of ISKCON, shared the shorter version of the video on X with the caption, "Nowhere is safe. Don't leave your children's, women's alone. When people identified & caught the local Maulavi he started crying & clutched his mother to save him from the mob. #RamzanHorror." Here is an archive of the video.
BOOM has chosen not the include the video because of its graphic nature.
The video was also shared by right wing X user Megh Updates with the caption, "When people identified & caught the local Maulavi, he started crying & clutched his mother to save him from the mob." Click here to view an archive.
Both Das and Megh Updates posted shorter versions of the video where visuals of Bangladesh Police are not seen.
Below is the screenshot and archive of a longer version of the video. Click here for the archive.
BOOM has fact checked both Das and Megh Updates on various occasions for peddling misinformation.
The video has an overlaid text in Bengali that roughly translates in English as, "Misdoings of a devotee of the jannat. What is happening in Dinajpur during the month of Roza." (Original text in Bengali: একজন জান্নাতি হাফেজের কাণ্ড রোজার মাসে একি হচ্ছে দিনাজপুরে....?)
Incident from Bangladesh
BOOM was able to ascertain that the incident is from Dinajpur in Bangladesh and not India. Visuals from the video show people wearing the Bangladesh Police uniform. The uniform contains a badge of Rangpur Range of the Bangladesh Police. Below are screenshots of the same.
We then ran a relevant keyword search and found a several Bengali news reports by local outlets on the incident. A news report by Somoy News states that the incident happened in Dinapur city's Kalitala area, where a school student of sixth standard was forcefully kissed on March 17. The perpetrator was identified as Sakhawat Hossen; who was apprehended by locals and then handed over to the police.
Hossen, 20, a student of a local madrasa, attacked the 12-year-old girl on March 17 around 8.45 am after following her for a while. The family of the girl has filed a police complaint and Hossen was taken into custody later.
According to another report, the family claimed that the accused Hossen is mentally unstable and has been under treatment for the same. Additionally, BOOM Bangladesh reached out to Dinajpur Kotwali thana Officer-in-charge, Mohammed Farid Hossen. Hossen told BOOM that the accused is not a Muslim cleric and is studying in general madrasa now.
(Additional reporting: BOOM Bangladesh)