A video of a railway platform being vandalised by a mob in Bangladesh is doing the rounds on social media with claims that it happened in Kolkata; and the miscreants have been falsely identified as Bangladeshi refugees. BOOM found that the video is from Bangladesh, where premises of the Brahmanbaria railway station were ransacked by madrassa students.
The 4 minute 58 seconds long video shows an unruly mob ransacking the railway station, with sticks and iron rods as they raise slogans in Bengali.
The video is viral amid widespread protests across the country against the Citizenship Amendment Act. It has been captioned as, "This scene from Kolkata, these are Bangladesh Refugees, they don't have any citizenship, if they dare to do this even without citizenship what happens after giving them Citizenship, God bless our Country."
The post is archived here.
Viral on Facebook
Anti-CAA protest took a violent turn in multiple cities including a few in West Bengal, where protesters pelted stones on railway coaches and set vehicles on fire. Videos showing protesters vandalising public property of railway stations of the Murshidabad district, have gone viral since.
Fact Check
BOOM was able to ascertain that the video is not from India as the name of the railway platform Brahmanbaria ('ব্রাহ্মনবাড়ীয়া') was visible at the 38 second mark. Located under the Chittagong division, Brahmanbaria is a sub-divisional town of the Brahmanbaria district. Below is the screen grab of the platform name that is visible in the viral videos.
Station name of Brahmanberia as shown in the video
Upon relevant keyword searches, we were directed to a longer video that was uploaded to Facebook on January 14, 2016.
The caption in the post questions devout Muslims for taking the road of violence and ransacking property in the name of Jihad. We then looked up relevant news reports by adding time filter and were directed to two articles from Dhakatimes and Prothom Alo respectively.
According to the news reports, violence erupted in the city of Brahmanbaria after a student lost his life during clashes that broke out between local shopkeepers and madrassa students of the area. Following the death, students of the madrassa vandalised public property including that of the local railway station. The clashes reportedly broke out because of an altercation between a student and local shopkeeper.
More images of the vandalisation can be viewed here.