An old clip reappears in the post after a deadly protest over legislation in India in West Bengal to change the way Muslim-owned property is managed, falsely claiming it shows that Muslims have destroyed Hindu families. The video was previously circulated in November 2024 after a mob attacked a shrine in Bangladesh.
“In West Bengal, 150 acres of Hindu farmland were destroyed. Animals, trees, vehicles, bungalows were burned by Muslims,” the Hindi language title read on a Facebook video shared on April 13, 2025.
It added: “Why is Mamata Banerjee not responding to this.” “Hindu, you have to speak out loud.”
The video, viewed over 260,000 times, shows a group of people wearing skull hats carrying sticks through the fields and passing a small reservoir. Later they saw the structure of stone, which seemed to have caught fire.
Screenshot of False Facebook post, captured on April 17, 2025
The video surfaced along with similar claims on Facebook and X in mid-April after four people died and was arrested for a bill that passed a bill to reform the hugely wealthy Muslim land ownership organization (archived link).
According to the Indian-ruled Indian nationalist government, the legislation will increase transparency in land management by taking charge of a strong WAQF board.
Political opposition calls the bill a “attack” against the polarization of the Muslim minority in India and accuses Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party of trying to win favor with its right-wing Hindu base.
However, the loop video was not filmed in West Bengal.
Bangladesh Shrine
Searching for video key frames on Google to find it already Share on Facebook November 28, 2024 (Archive link).
Its Bengali title read: “Sherpur Darbar Sharif was attacked, destroyed, plundered and torched.”
Screenshots compare videos used in fake posts (left) and Facebook videos from November 2024 (right)
Bangladesh news media reported that at that time, a group of Muslims clashed against shrines in the Shapur region with the claim of “anti-Islamic activities” (archived here and here).
Local newspaper Prothom Alo reported that one person was killed and several others were injured, citing figures provided by authorities (archive link).
The details of the report resulted in an image on the reservoir and its surrounding Google Maps, which was dug into the Sherpur area, which corresponds to the body of water seen in the fake shared video (archive link).
Comparison of screenshots of the reservoir seen in wrongly shared videos (left) and Google Maps (right)
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the unrest in India in West Bengal.
