Bangladesh: Harassment of Rajshahi civic official Taufiq Islam falsely shared by Indian RW as attack on Hindus

Several Right-wing X (formerly Twitter) handles have shared a 2.15-minute video claiming that it shows the harassment and physical assault of a Hindu teacher in Bangladesh.

Numerous incidents of targeted attacks on Hindus have been reported from the neighbouring country in the wake of the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government on August 5. The video is being circulated in that context.

The video shows several men heckling an older man. They first staple what appears to be cigarette packets to his shirt collar, then make him drink from a glass and finally pour something from a bottle on him. A commentator then appears in the video and states that the man being heckled is Gautam Pal, a popular teacher of mathematics from Azimpur Girls’ College, who was forced to resign. The video ends abruptly with the commentator claiming Hindu teachers were being targeted.

Vice-president of ISKCON Kolkata Radharaman Das (@RadharamnDas), who shares communal disinformation on a regular basis, amplified the video with the same claim.

Another Hindu teacher in Bangladesh has been insulted by Muslim students he once taught and was forced to resign. Every day, thousands of Hindus in Bangladesh are being pressured to sign resignation letters. Their aim is to remove all 2.5 million Hindus working in Bangladesh.… pic.twitter.com/g4NyjnHfpp

— Radharamn Das राधारमण दास (@RadharamnDas) August 21, 2024

The clip was also shared along with the Hindu-teacher-being-targeted claim by users such as Keh Ke Peheno (@coolfunnytshirt), Baba Banaras™ (@RealBababanaras), Bloody Media (@bloody_media), Ajeet Bharti (@ajeetbharti) and others.

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Author and economist Sanjeev Sanyal quote-tweeted Radharaman Das and wrote, “Of course channels like
@dwnews and @BBCWorld think that that this perfectly reasonable behaviour from “students” in Bangladesh. How is this different from Nazi Germany?? Or perhaps this treatment of Hindus is thought justified in the same way that the ancestors of @dwnews journalists treated the Jews.”

Fact Check

We notice the words ‘Chapai Express’ written on the frame of the viral video. Chapai Nawabganj is a district in northwestern Bangladesh under Rajshahi division. We performed a relevant keyword search in Bengali and found several reports on an incident that transpired at the office of Chapai Nawabganj civic body. These reports carried images which showed the same incident of harassment.

According to a report by bdnews24.com, a group of youths forced a government official at Chapai Nawabganj municipality to resign after finding two packs of cigarettes in his office drawer on Monday, August 19, 2024. The official was identified as Taufiq Islam, an executive engineer with the civic body. The action against him was spearheaded by Ismail Hossain Sirazi, a local leader of the students’ movement.

Quoting municipal executive officer Mamun Aur Rashid, the bdnews24.com report adds that Islam fell ‘unconscious’ after the incident and was taken him to a hospital. The student activists had also forced two other municipal officials to wrete resignation letters on white papers, the report says.

Here is a screenshot from the translated version of the report, with the name of the official highlighted for the reader:

Another report, by banglatribune.com narrated the same events and added that the executive engineer, Taufiq Islam, had stopped going to office after returning home from hospital.

We also found a video report on the incident by media outlet Swadesh Pratidin, where the man leading the youth, Ismail Hossain Sirazi, claims that civic body officials had voluntarily resigned. Below is a screenshot from the video report which captures the incident.

Hence, it is clear that the incident is being falsely given a communal colour by Indian social media users. It is not a case of an attack on a Hindu in Bangladesh. The video shows a municipal engineer named Taufiq Islam being heckled by student protesters in Chapai Nawabganj of Rajshahi division in Bangladesh.

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