A video of a few persons holding on to the windows and pipes of a building is making rounds on social media. A few can be seen falling off the building while trying to scale it down to escape from a group of attackers. It is claimed that the visuals show Hindu students in Dhaka being attacked by Jamat-e-Islami, a political party in Bangladesh. Some users are claiming this is an incident showing an attack on a Hindu hostel by the Jamaat-e-Islami. This video is being shared in the context of the ongoing anti-quota protests in Bangladesh. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Viral video shows Hindu students being attacked by the Jamaat-e-Islami activists in Dhaka.
Fact: As per the news reports from Bangladeshi media, the visuals show anti-quota protestors allegedly throwing the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) workers off a building in Chittagong’s Muradpur. None of the news reports on this incident mentioned a religious angle. Hence, the claim made in the post is misleading.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a reverse image search on a few of the viral video’s keyframes. This search led us to many new reports (here, here, and here) about this incident that occurred in Bangladesh’s Muradpur during the ongoing anti-quota protests in Bangladesh.
As per the reports (here, here, and here), the viral video shows the Bangladesh Chhatra League(BCL) workers and leaders being thrown off a building by students protesting against the quota system in Bangladesh.
Reports (here and here) from the Bangladeshi media state that the people who pushed the BCL members off the building were Chhatra Shibir and Chhatra Dal members. Later, police rescued the BCL members who were injured during this incident and admitted them to the Chittagong Medical College Hospital and Parkview Hospital.
The Bangladesh Awami League, Bangladesh’s current ruling political party, took to Facebook to comment on this incident. Sharing a photo from the incident, they said that ‘At least 15 workers of Chhatra League were allegedly dropped from a five-storey building during a clash with general students during an anti-quota protest in Chittagong. They are beaten even after falling from the roof to the ground. Earlier, the Chhatra League leaders and workers stuck on the roof were attacked with sharp weapons. After being rescued, two injured were taken to Chittagong Medical College Hospital after being rescued.’
Based on the names given in the news reports, most of the injured in this incident are also Muslims.
Contrary to the viral claim that the video belongs to an incident in which Jamaat-e-Islami attacked Hindu students in Bangladesh’s national capital, Dhaka, the incident shows a fight between two student groups.
One is the BCL, who were reportedly thrown off a building in Chittagong Muradpur, and the other group is the students protesting the quotas.
None of the news reports by the Bangladeshi media called this a religious or communal attack, which makes it clear that the viral claim shares a false narrative around this incident.
To sum up, a video of the Bangladesh Chhatra League members getting tossed off a building in Chittagong by the anti-quota protestors is viral with a false communal claim.
