Recently, a video has been circulated on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) with the claim: “Save your daughters from devils. The video is being called from Bangladesh where a Hindu girl was molested in daylight by a Maulana. This is what happens when you divide in castes and become a minority.”
In the circulated video, a person resembling a madrasa student is seen forcibly harassing a schoolgirl. It is being claimed that the video is recent and that the girl being harassed belongs to the minority Hindu community.
View the post circulated on X here (Archive).
Fact-Check
Rumor Scanner team’s investigation found that the circulated video is not recent but dates back to March 2024. Additionally, the harassed girl is not from a solely Hindu family but rather from an interfaith Hindu-Muslim family.
Upon reviewing the posts that circulated this claim, no reliable and detailed evidence supporting the claim was found. Conducting a reverse image search on multiple key frames from the video led to a mainstream media report published on the ATN News YouTube channel on March 18, 2024, titled “A Hafiz forcibly kisses a schoolgirl in public—what happened next” (source).
This report features scenes from the circulated video and states that in Dinajpur, a Hafiz forcibly kissed a schoolgirl. Following this act, a video of him fleeing the scene went viral on social media. Within three hours, Kotwali police arrested the accused, Hafiz Sakhawat Hossain. Additionally, observing the displayed footage in the report, a timestamp on the CCTV camera shows the date as Sunday, March 17, 2024.
Following this lead, a relevant keyword search found a mainstream media report from Jugantor, published on March 18, 2024, titled “Schoolgirl kissed in public, young man arrested” (source). This report states:
“A young man named Sakhawat Hossain was arrested by the police for forcibly kissing and assaulting a sixth-grade schoolgirl in Dinajpur. According to the police, the sixth-grade girl from a girls’ high school in Dinajpur was on her way to her cousin’s house in Kalitala. At that time, Sakhawat Hossain followed her. When she reached the gate of her cousin’s house, Sakhawat Hossain suddenly kissed her forcefully, causing harassment. When the schoolgirl tried to scream, Sakhawat scratched her cheeks with his nails, leaving injuries on her face. Sakhawat then fled the scene. On Monday [March 18, 2024], the accused Sakhawat Hossain was presented in court.”
At that time, Rumor Scanner spoke with a relative of the girl, who stated that she follows the Hindu religion. However, Rumor Scanner verified that she was born into an interfaith Hindu-Muslim family, with some of her relatives being Muslim. Additionally, some of these Muslim relatives also posted about the incident on social media.
Therefore, a video of the harassment of a girl from an interfaith family, which took place about a year ago, has recently been circulated with the claim that she is from a Hindu family, which is misleading.
Sources
- ATN News – A Hafiz forcibly kisses a schoolgirl in public—what happened next
- Jugantor – Schoolgirl kissed in public, young man arrested
- Statement of Victim’s Relative
