Photo of Muslim Family From Bangladesh Falsely Shared as One From Rajasthan

The photograph shows a family converting to Islam in Narsingdi, Bangladesh.

A photograph of a group of seated people is going viral across social media platforms and is being shared to claim that it shows a family of five from Rajasthan, who recently converted from Hinduism to Islam.

However, we found that the photograph is actually from Narsingdi, Bangladesh. As per reports, the mother, identified as one Asma Begum had converted to Islam four years ago and her children recently followed suit.

CLAIM

The family’s photograph is being shared with the following claim in Hindi, which reads:

“राजस्थान में आज एक ही परिवार के पाँच हिन्दू लोगो ने हिन्दू धर्म छोड कर #इस्लाम धर्म अपना लिया लेकिन अभी तक किसी ने भी मुबारकबाद नहीं दि! अल्लाह इनके परिवार में बरकत अता फरमां”

(Translation: Five members from a Hindu family in Rajasthan left Hinduism and embraced Islam, but nobody has congratulated them yet! May Allah shower blessings on their family.)

At the time of writing this article, this post by Facebook user Md Jawed Haider Ali was shared more than 7,900 times.

The claim is being shared on Facebook and Twitter, and their archives can be seen here, here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We carefully observed the photograph and found that the photo carried a watermark which read ‘Samsung Quad Camera Hasan Aiob' followed by text in Bengali.

Taking a clue from here, we looked up social media profiles for ‘Hasan Aiob’ and found one, which had shared a post with the viral image on 8 December.

The post’s Bengali caption roughly translates to, “In Madhabadi of Narsingdi, 5 members of the same family left Hindu religion and converted to Islam,” and contains a YouTube link which shows a video interview with the people seen in the photo.

Next, we used keywords such as “নরসিংদীর মাধবদী হিন্দু পরিবার ইসলাম” (Narsingdi Madhabdi Hindu family Islam) in Bengali to look for news reports regarding the incident.

The results led us to reports on Eye News BD and Narsingdi Times, both of which carried photographs similar to the one in the claim.

As per Eye News BD, the family resides at Kotalirchar lane of the Madhabdi municipal area in Narsingdi, Bangladesh. The man in the photograph was identified as A Hannan, a widower who married Aarti Rani, a widow.

Rani converted to Islam in order to marry Hannan and adopted the name Ayesha Begum. Her three children from her previous marriage also converted to Islam and adopted new names in accordance with the religion, the report noted.

The Quint reached out to Hasan Aiob for more information regarding the photograph, who confirmed that he clicked the photograph.

Aiob then shared the original photographs that he had taken of the family with us.

We looked at the photos' EXIF data, which provides information on a photograph's date, time, camera settings and location, and found that the photograph had been clicked on 8 December 2021.

Additionally, we saw that the 'offset time', which denotes the time zone in which the photo was clicked, was '+06:00'. Bangladesh, along with a few other countries, is six hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and follows that time zone.

Evidently, a photograph showing a family from Narsingdi, Bangladesh who converted to Islam was falsely shared as an incident from Rajasthan.

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