A video clip from an Al Jazeera report on protests in Bangladesh that began on 18 December, following the killing of student leader and co-founder and spokesperson of Inqilab Moncho, Sharif Osman Hadi, is being widely circulated on social media.
What's the claim?: The viral clip claims that Al Jazeera confirmed India’s involvement in the killing of Sharif Osman Hadi.
Why is it being shared?: Sharif Osman Hadi was shot dead on 18 December in Dhaka during an assassination attempt by unidentified assailants. His death triggered widespread protests across Bangladesh.
Soon after the shooting, claims began circulating that Hadi’s attackers had fled to India after the attack.
Hadi was also known as a vocal critic of India.
The combination of Hadi’s anti-India stance and unverified claims about his assailants fleeing to India has contributed to heightened anti-India sentiment.
What's the truth?: The audio in the clip is AI-generated.
The line claiming “growing suspicion of Indian involvement” does not appear in the original Al Jazeera report.
What we found: We ran keyframes from the viral clip through reverse image search.
We found that the visuals originate from an Al Jazeera news report posted on their Youtube channel on 19 December.
We reviewed the full, unedited report, which shows that while it documents protests and allegations made by demonstrators, it does not present or endorse any claim of Indian involvement in the killing.
To check whether the video was altered using AI, we ran the clip through Hiya's Deepfake Voice Detector.
Their tool gave the audio an authenticity score of 26 out of 100, noting that the "sampled voice is likely a deepfake."
However, Hive Moderation's tool did not identify this video as one containing AI-generated elements.
Additionally, we did not find any credible news reports confirming Indian involvement in Sharif Osman Hadi’s killing.
Conclusion: The viral video is misleading. While it uses real footage from an Al Jazeera report on protests in Bangladesh, the audio has been AI-manipulated to insert claims that the channel never made.
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