A video showing a big group of people demolishing a building with hammers and rods has gone viral on social media, where users are claiming that it shows Muslims in Bangladesh vandalising Hindu temples and attacking Hindu devotees.
How did we find out the truth?: Under one of the claims, we came across a post by Bangladeshi journalist and fact-checker, Shohanur Rahman, who said that the video did not show a Hindu temple, but a Sufi shrine.
We then divided the video into multiple keyframes using InVID, a video verification tool, and ran reverse image searches on some of them, supplementing the search with the keywords 'Sufi shrine' in Bangla (সুফি মাজার).
Through Google's reverse image search, we came across the same video, shared on Facebook on 29 August 2024, which carried details about the incident.
The translated caption mentioned that it showed Hazrat Baba Ali Pagla's shrine in Bangladesh's Sirajganj.
Taking a cue from this, we ran a Google search using the seer's name in Bangla (হযরত আলী পাগলার মাজার).
This led us to a verified YouTube channel called 'The Metro TV', which had shared the video with the title, 'Ali Pagla's shrine in Kazipur, Sirajganj is being demolished'.
We also came across news reports by Daily Sun and New Age BD mentioning the shrine's name, saying that it was one of many Sufi shrines that had been vandalised or demolished in a string of similar targeted attacks across Bangladesh.
A report by BDNews24 said that the incident took place on 29 August 2024.
Conclusion: An old video of a Sufi shrine being demolished has gone viral with the false claim that it shows a Hindu temple being vandalised in Bangladesh.
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