Old Video of Muslim Congregation Shared as Bangladeshis Leaving West Bengal
The video is old and was taken during the Biswa Ijtema, a religious congregation of Muslims, held in West Bengal.
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A video going viral on social media claims that it shows a recent incident of a huge number of Bangladeshi immigrants walking towards border checkposts to leave West Bengal amid the state government's crackdown on illegal immigration.
What did the post say?: The video was uploaded on X by a user named 'MajorPoonia' with the caption,"As soon as the BJP government came to power, the Bangladeshis are returning home.... but who let them in in the first place?"
The post has garnered over 1 lakh views after it was uploaded on 27 May.
(You can view other archives of similar claims here, here, and here.)
What are the facts?: The claim is false. This video from West Bengal is four months old and doesn't show Bangladeshi immigrants returning to their home country.
How did we find out the truth?: A reverse image search of the video's keyframes led us to several social media posts from January this year which contained the same video and stated that it was taken during the Biswa Ijtema, a religious congregation of Muslims, in West Bengal's Hooghly district.
An X post from January stating that the video took place during the Biswa Ijtema.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
A Google search with the keywords 'Biswa Ijtema West Bengal Hooghly' led us to multiple news reports stating that the congregation took place in Hooghly from 2 to 5 January.
The Statesman's report on the Biswa Ijtema.
(Source: The Statesman/Screenshot)
"After a long hiatus of 32 years, the Biswa Ijtema is set to be organised once again in West Bengal. The Biswa Ijtema will take place from January 2 to 5 at the Puinan Ground in the Dadpur area, under the jurisdiction of the Tajpur Police Station in the Hooghly district. This religious congregation will officially conclude on January 5," stated the caption of a video uploaded by Aaj Tak Bangla on 2 January this year.
Aaj Tak Bangla's reportage of the Biswa Ijtema.
(Source: YouTube/Screenshot)
You can find similar reports on the congregation here and here.
To ascertain that the viral video is indeed from West Bengal, we put the video on Google's AI tool 'Gemini' and asked it what the exact location of the video was. Gemini stated that the video was filmed at Amira More, an intersection along the Durgapur Expressway (NH-19) adjacent to the Puinan area in the Hooghly district of West Bengal.
We then put the location on Google Street View and found visuals that matched the visuals seen in the viral video.
Google Street View showing visuals of Hooghly's Amira More.
Visuals on Google Street View match with the viral video.
Conclusion: The video is from West Bengal but it does not show Bangladeshi immigrants leaving the state.
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