A video (here, here, and here) that allegedly shows an American woman getting ‘heckled and harassed by Bangladeshis for not wearing Hijab’ is doing the rounds on social media. In this viral video, we can see a woman harassed by a few persons while she takes a rickshaw ride. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: This video shows an American woman being harassed in Bangladesh for not wearing a Hijab.
Fact: The woman seen in the viral video is a Bangladeshi actress named Misthi Subas. This incident reportedly happened when Misthi was cutting a cake on the Dhaka University campus to celebrate the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina’s birthday. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a reverse image search on a few keyframes from the viral video. This led us to a few social media posts (here, here and here) that contained similar visuals of the same incident. According to these posts, the incident took place when a woman was celebrating the birthday of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Taking this as a hint, we performed a keyword search on the internet, which led us to several news reports (here, here, and here) on this incident. As per the reports, the woman seen in the viral video is not an American but a Bangladeshi actress and Sheikh Hasina’s supporter, Misthi Subas.
According to news reports, this incident happened when Misthi Subas went to the Dhaka University campus to celebrate Sheikh Hasina’s 78th birthday when she was harassed by a few people present at the location.
Video reports (here, here, and here) on this incident clearly show Misthi getting heckled and harassed by a few persons while she was leaving on a rickshaw. Nowhere in the news reports on this incident was it mentioned that the public harassed her for not wearing a HIjab, making the viral claim untrue.
To sum up, a video of Bangladeshi actress Misthi Subas being harassed for celebrating Sheikh Hasina’s birthday is falsely shared as visuals of an American woman harassed by Bangladeshis for not wearing a hijab.
