Bahubali Of Assam? Photos Of A Boy Rescuing A Fawn Are From Bangladesh

A series of images showing a boy rescuing a fawn from a river has been shared thousands of times with the claim that it occurred in Assam. This is false. The photos are in fact eight years old and were shot in Bangladesh.

The images show a young boy wading through a flooded river with a fawn held above the water.

Indian social media handles are sharing the images with the claim that the incident happened in Assam, which is battling floods. The images are being shared with the caption: "Real "Bahubali" of Assam who saved a fawn from drowning". Bahubali is the protagonist of two Indian movies which were critically and commercially successful and have developed a massive following.

A scene in the movie "Bahubali: The Beginning", the eponymous protagonist emerges from a river carrying a massive Shivling on his shoulder. The photo of the boy carrying the fawn has been compared to Bahubali's feat.

Click here, here, here and here to view the archives of the Facebook posts and here, here and here to view the archives of the tweets.

The images have also been shared widely on Facebook and Twitter.

Screenshot of the false posts shared on Facebook

Screenshot of the false posts on Twitter

Fact Check

BOOM reverse searched the images and found multiple articles from 2014 about a boy saving a fawn from a flooded river. The Daily Mail reported that the boy "defiantly held the young fawn in one hand above his head as he plunged through the surging river."

The Daily Mail credited Hasibul Wahab and Caters News Agency for the photographs. A search on Caters' website yielded no results.

BOOM searched for Hasibul Wahab on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and found a common account with the name Hasib Wahab. Wahab has linked his personal blog on his LinkedIn profile.

Going through Wahab's 2014 archives, BOOM came across this post from March 19, 2014. In the post, Wahab states that he clicked the series of photos at Nijhum Dwip, Noakhyali, Bangladesh while on tour. He further stated the photograph was taken on June 23, 2012.

According to Wahab, the boy's name in Abdul Mannan and he was 15 years old when the pictures were taken. Wahab claims that Abdul was not rescuing the fawn from drowning but rather uniting it with its herd across the flooded canal.

"I found the fawn alone stuck in mud near the canal in rain. I held the young fawn in one hand above my head and plunged through the surging canal to take the fawn near to the group of deer on the other side," Abdul is quoted to as saying by Wahab.

Wahab has posted one image on his blog which is similar to one of the photos being shared with the false claim.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo being shared with the false claim (L) and the photo in Wahab's blog (R).

BOOM examined the EXIF data of the photo and found out that it was taken with a Canon EOS REBEL T2i camera at 3:28 pm on June 23, 2012. The data also shows the email id of the photographer which matches the email id provided in Wahab's blog.

Incidentally, this is not the first time that the image has been falsely claimed to show floods in Assam. In 2016, the Assam government included the same image in its interim report on floods in the state to the then Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. "It is a big mistake. We accept it. Actually some DCs have forwarded this to us because of similarity with situation in Kaziranga National Park," a senior official said to PTI on condition of anonymity.