A video featuring journalist Rajat Sharma speaking about between the alleged brewing tensions between India and Bangladesh, which might lead to a 'war' has gone viral on social media.
What Sharma highlights:
He noted that a 'recent' incident at the Assam border between India and Bangladesh saw Bangladeshi border guards allegedly intruding into Indian territory and trying to stop the construction of a Hindu temple.
Secondly, he added that Bangladesh reportedly purchased Bayraktar TB2 attack drones from Turkey and deployed them near the Indian border. Additionally, some Bangladeshi statements have claimed the ability to capture parts of India, including Kolkata, within days.
Sharma linked the rising hostility to the influence of Pakistan, Turkey, and China, which are allegedly supporting and arming Bangladesh to stir tensions with India.
Further, Sharma noted India's preparedness for 'war' and stated that it heightened its airbases and army camps near the border, naval strength from Kolkata to Odisha, and advanced Israeli Heron drones for surveillance.
Sharma also spoke about the relations after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government and the rise of the interim government and Muhammad Yunus. He added that the the new leadership has allegedly aligned with anti-India forces, forgetting India’s pivotal role in Bangladesh’s 1971 independence.
What we found: At first, we ran some keyword searches to know if there were tensions brewing between India and Bangladesh.
A report by The Hindu from 26 September noted Yunus accused India of backing Hasina, whom he claimed killed young protesters and blamed India for obstructing SAARC progress and disliking Bangladesh’s student-led movement.
Apart from this, there were no recent reports about drones or border tensions between the two nations.
We, then, divided the viral video into multiple screenshots and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.
This led us to the same video uploaded by a channel named 'The Real Report' from 29 September.
We, then, ran a relevant keyword search to find whether such a bulletin had been hosted by Sharma, but could not find any legitimate reports about it.
We, also, noticed that the Sharma's audio lagged in some parts, which led us to run the clip on AI-detection platform, Hive Moderation.
It noted that the clip was 92.1% likely to contain AI-generated content.
On drones and border tensions claims: The viral video noted that a Hindu temple's construction was halted by the Bangladesh border guards. However, this incident dates back to December 2024, as reported the Economic Times.
Similarly, a section of Bangladeshi politicians commented that they could occupy certain land in India in December 2024. It is also not a recent incident, reported the New Indian Express.
Team WebQoof fact-checked a similar video AI-manipulated video of Sharma and you can read the report here.
Conclusion: An AI-manipulated video of Sharma has gone viral on social media to make misleading claims about India-Bangladesh relations alleging that the two countries could go on a possible war.
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