A video (here and here) going viral on social media shows a street vendor selling Bangladeshi flags being brutally beaten by an army personnel. It is claimed that the incident took place in West Bengal, where the vendor was allegedly trying to sell Bangladeshi flags. Let’s find out the truth behind this video.
Claim: The video shows a Bangladeshi flag seller being beaten and arrested in West Bengal for selling flags.
Fact: The incident took place in Bangladesh, not West Bengal. The man was a flag seller named Hamza, who was accidentally beaten by an army personnel during a chaotic moment outside the Bangladesh National Stadium in Dhaka on 10 June 2025. The army later apologised and compensated him with one lakh taka. Hence the claim is FALSE.
To find the truth, we closely examined the video. In the video where the army person is seen beating the vendor, a wall in the background shows an advertisement in Bengali that reads “বইয়ে বইয়ে সয়লাব হোক ৫৬ হাজার”—a promotion urging people to order books from the Rokomari website, which is the largest online book store in Bangladesh, not India. This advertisement strongly suggests that the video is from Bangladesh, not West Bengal.
Then we performed a reverse image search on Google, which led us to several YouTube news reports from Bangladesh featuring the viral clip (here, here and here). According to Bangladeshi media, the incident took place at the Bangladesh National Stadium during a Singapore vs Bangladesh match. The man in the video was a flag seller. Reports state that the army personnel later gave him one lakh Bangladeshi Taka as compensation and publicly apologised for the incident.
Further research led us to several news reports by Bangladeshi local media outlets (here, here and here). According to these reports, during the AFC Asian Cup qualifier between Bangladesh and Singapore on 10 June 2025, chaos broke out outside Gate No. 4 of the Bangladesh National Stadium in Dhaka as many ticketless fans tried to enter. In an attempt to control the situation, an army personnel accidentally beat a flag seller named Hamza. The army, led by Lt. Colonel Afzalur Rahman Chowdhury from the Gulistan Army Camp, later met Hamza, expressed regret, and gave him a donation of one lakh taka as compensation. The army called the incident isolated and emotional and confirmed disciplinary action against the personnel involved.
Additionally, we could not find any reports of a Bangladeshi flag seller being arrested in West Bengal. The specific incident shown in the viral video did not happen in West Bengal—the video is from Bangladesh.
To sum up, a video of an army personnel beating a Bangladeshi flag seller in Dhaka is falsely shared as if it happened in West Bengal.
