Following reports of attacks against Hindus in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, a video spread in social media posts that falsely claimed it showed a Muslim mob vandalising an idol of a Hindu goddess in the South Asian country. The footage, however, was filmed in neighbouring India’s West Bengal state. It shows villagers dismantling a statue of Hindu deity Kali as a part of a traditional ritual, one of the organisers told AFP.<\/h3>\n
“Yesterday i<\/span>n Bangladesh, Muslims attacked Kalibari i.e. Kali temple and destroyed the idols of Mother Kali and all the Hindu gods and goddesses,” read a Hindi-language Facebook post<\/a> that shared the video on December 2.<\/p>\n “The Hindu devotees present inside the temple were killed. More than 20 Hindus are badly injured. But the whole world is silent on the massacre of Hindus in Bangladesh.”<\/p>\n The video — shared by a Facebook user with more than 111,000 followers — shows a group of men tearing down a statue.<\/p>\n Kali, usually depicted as a four-armed lady in blue with a long tongue sticking out from red lips, is worshipped by Hindus as th<\/span>e goddess<\/a> of death, destruction and time (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n Screenshot of the false post taken on December 2, 2024<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The video made the rounds on Facebook<\/a> and\u00a0X<\/a> following attacks against Hindus in Bangladesh over their perceived support for the government of Sheikh Hasina, the autocratic leader who was toppled in August in a student-led revolution.<\/p>\n The arrest of Bangladeshi monk Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari, who called for the protection of Hindus, sparked clashes<\/a> with security forces in November in which one person was killed\u00a0(archived link<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n But there have been no official reports indicating the incident described in the posts — a purported massacre of Hindu devotees in a temple in Bangladesh —\u00a0actually occurred.<\/span><\/p>\n Moreover, a reverse image search of a keyframe from the video, combined with keyword searches, found it was filmed in India and not Bangladesh as online posts claimed.<\/p>\n Longer footage of the same scene but taken from a different angle was\u00a0shared on Facebook<\/a> on November 27, 2024 (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n Bengali-language caption to the longer footage said it showed a ritual involving the Hindu goddess Kali in Sultanpur, a village in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, which borders Bangladesh.<\/p>\n Below is a screenshot comparison of the circulating video (left) and the longer footage from Facebook (right):<\/p>\nWest Bengal ritual<\/h3>\n