A video showing Bangladesh's national flag painted on a road with some people driving and spitting on it is going viral on the internet as recent visuals from Maharashtra.
The claim comes after the recent mob lynching of a 25-year-old Hindu man named Chandra Das in Bangladesh.
What did the viral post say?: An X (formerly Twitter) premium user shared the clip with a caption that said, "People in Maharashtra put Bangladesh flag on road as a protest against killing of Hindus by Islamist in Bangladesh."
What are the facts?: While the video is indeed from Maharashtra, it could be traced back to at least December 2024. This makes the viral claim misleading.
How did we find that out?: We conducted a simple reverse image search on the keyframes of the viral video using the help of Google Lens.
This directed us to the same visuals posted on a Facebook handle named 'Modi Yogi'.
It was shared on 11 December 2024 with a caption that loosely translated to, "We’ll do back exactly what was done to us. A big salute to those who did this."
Geolocating the place: At one point in the Facebook clip, we noticed a signboard of a shop in the background that said "Pearl".
Next, we isolated the shop sign and conducted a Google Lens search on it.
The loaded results showed that a 'Pearl Salon' with a similar shop sign located in Ghatkopar East, Mumbai.
We searched for the shop's name on Google Maps and then found the 'street view' option.
The visuals appeared to be similar to the background seen in the viral video.
Comparing visuals: Team WebQoof further compared a keyframe from the viral video to visuals available in Google Maps. We found that both of them show the same location.
Hence, it was safe to conclude that the video was indeed taken in Maharashtra.
Conclusion: Evidently, the video is old and is being incorrectly peddled as a recent incident from Maharashtra.
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