Did These Bangladeshi Nationals Join Anti-CEC Protests in London? What We Know

The image is AI-generated and there is no credible evidence to support the claim made.

An image showing a woman interviewing two men wearing Bangladesh's national flag is being widely shared on social media.

What's the claim?: Those sharing the image have claimed that it was taken during YouTuber Dhruv Rathee's protest about vote theft in London, which was held on 17 October 2026.

• The image is being shared to claim that when the two were questioned by a journalist, they said that they participated in the protests against Chief Election Commission (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar because they used to live in West Bengal, but were "exiled" because of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters conducted under Gyanesh Kumar.

Who shared it?: Among those sharing this image and/or claim are Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) related accounts, such as BJP Delhi's Instagram account and BJP Kerala's President Rajeev Chandrasekhar, as well as former Rajya Sabha MP from Shiv Sena, Sanjay Nirupam.

(Archived versions of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, and here.)

But...?: The image is an AI-generated one and we didn't find any recorded video evidence of this conversation happening during or after the protests in London.

How do we know?: When we looked at the image carefully, we noticed a few discrepancies.

• Firstly, the 'journalist's' microphone has no logo, but has a solid white box around it, which is unlikely if it was a real journalist or content creator.

• Secondly, one of the Indian flags in the background has a beige block in the middle of the green portion of the flag.

• Thirdly and lastly, the big placard carried by a person in the background has gibberish text that don't resemble real words.

• We ran the image through two AI-generated image detectors, namely SightEngine and Hive Moderation, both of which concluded that the image was made using AI. (Swipe).

Additionally, a SynthID check confirmed that the image was made using OpenAI tools.

What about the interview?: We looked for evidence to confirm whether this exchange took place, but did not find any.

Since this 'interview' was only shared on social media and some websites with low credibility, we were not able to independently verify whether Bangladeshi nationals participated in the protest and if they gave such an interview.

• Most credible news reports, including those by Times of India, Mint, and The Hindu mentioned members of the Students Federation of India (SFI), Congress, and the Indian Workers' Association in attendance, and noted that their flags were seen along with Indian and Communist flags.

• While some of them mentioned a counter-protest staged by those supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, none of them mentioned Bangladeshi nationals in attendance.

Conclusion: We couldn't independently confirm whether such a conversation took place, but the image being shared with the claim is an AI-generated one.

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