Claim
Bangladeshi Islamists are pouring petrol on the paddy crops of Hindus and setting them on fire.
fact check
The farmer seen in the viral video is Naseem Mia of Kushtia. On December 5, 2024, mischievous elements burnt his harvested crop.
A video of a farmer crying after his crop was destroyed by fire is being circulated with a false communal claim that Muslims have burnt crops grown by Hindus in Bangladesh.
BOOM found that the man seen in the video is Naseem Miyan, a farmer from Kushtia, whose harvested crop was burnt by miscreants on December 5, 2024.
Communal tensions have increased in Bangladesh following the arrest of Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das on November 25. The country has now revealed that 88 incidents of communal violence targeting minorities, mainly Hindus, were recorded since Sheikh Hasina was ousted from Dhaka on August 5. Meanwhile, Interim Government Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam also said that 70 people have been arrested in connection with the incidents of communal violence.
The video is being circulated on X with the caption, “Bangladeshi Islamists are pouring petrol on ripe rice crops of Hindus and setting them on fire.”
Petrol is on fire in the bread and butter farming of Bangladeshi Islamist Hindus. pic.twitter.com/CEJXgN0bYe
– We, we, we?? (@AjayChauhan41) 8 December 2024
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Fact Check: Muslim farmer wrongly described as Hindu
Reverse image searching on keyframes of the viral video led us to a post uploaded to Facebook on December 6, 2024, which also included the viral video. The post was captioned in Bengali, “Miscreants set fire to a farmer’s paddy fields in Kushtia.”
In the video the man narrates how he saw at dawn that his farm was on fire and he could not save his ripe crops from the flames. He also said that petrol was used to set his crop on fire.
A keyword search in Bengali led us to the same video uploaded on the YouTube channel of Bangladesh news outlet Desh TV on December 6, 2024.
In the video, the man can be heard thanking Allah for giving him a good crop this year, which has now been destroyed. See here.
Taking a cue from this, we did another Bengali keyword search and found an article by Channel 24 which included a scene from the viral video. The article said that the miscreants burnt the paddy crop grown in one and a half bigha land of farmer Naseem Mia in Kushtia. The incident took place on the morning of December 5 in the fields of Lakshmipur in Piyarpur Sadar upazila.
According to the report, Mia had harvested the paddy a few days ago and had kept it in four heaps in the field. Someone had set fire to all four heaps. Kushtia Model Police Station in-charge Muhammad Shahabur Rahman Sihab had also assured appropriate legal action if the complaint is registered.
(This story was originally published by BOOM, and republished by NDTV as part of Shakti Collective)
