Following the passage of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, in the first week of April, Muslims have been protesting against the newly enacted law across the country, including in West Bengal (here, here, and here). According to news reports (here, here), on 11 April 2025, these protests turned violent in Murshidabad district, West Bengal, resulting in Violence and riots. Reports (here, here, and here) indicate that three people lost their lives in the violence: two Hindus, Chandan Das and Hargobind Das, were killed in a mob attack, while a Muslim man died in police firing. According to reports, hundreds of people (mostly Hindus) affected by the violence in Murshidabad district crossed the Bhagirathi River. They sought refuge in the adjoining Malda district (here, here, and here). On 12 April 2025, the Calcutta High Court ordered the deployment of central forces to restore peace and order in the district (here).
In this context, a video (here, here, and here) of a mob brutally thrashing a young boy is doing the rounds on social media. It is being claimed that this incident happened in West Bengal, and the boy was beaten to death in front of his father. We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: These visuals show a mob thrashing a child to death in front of his father during the religious violence in Murshidabad, West Bengal in April 2025.
Fact: This video is related to an incident from Bangladesh in March 2025, not West Bengal. It shows a mob attacking a teenager accused of raping a child in Khilkhet Dhaka. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral video, we performed a reverse image search on a few of its keyframes. This search led us to social media posts (here and here) from March 2025 containing the viral video, which means that the incident in the video predates the viral video.
Some of these posts linked this video to Bangladesh. Taking this as a hint, we performed a keyword search on the internet and found news reports (here and here) that contained visuals similar to what is seen in the viral video.
Reportedly, this incident happened in the Khilkhet area of Dhaka, Bangladesh. A few more news reports of this incident can be found here, here, here, here, and here.
As per these reports, a teenager accused of raping a five-year-old child was beaten by an angry mob in Dhaka on 18 March 2025. He was taken out of a police vehicle by the mob after vandalising it (here and here). He was later admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital in a critical condition.
As per a few reports, the name of the accused teenager is Jan Mia (here, here, and here). The Officer-in-Charge (OC) of the Khilkhet Police Station, Md. Kamal Hossain told the media (here, here) that police personnel were also attacked and injured in this incident. He also said that a case was filed against more than 100 people for carrying out this attack on the police. Two people were arrested on the same day. This evidence makes it clear that the viral video has nothing to do with India.
To sum up, a video of a violent mob attack on teenager accused of rape in Khilkhet, Bangladesh is falsely being linked to the April 2025 West Bengal communal violence.
