Claim: A video from Pakistan shows a woman from a religious minority being forcefully converted to Islam.
Fact: The video is from Bangladesh, but the details of the incident and its context are still unclear.
By conducting a reverse image search of the video’s keyframes and a keyword search on multiple social media platforms, Soch Fact Check came across differing claims on Facebook, X, and TikTok as to the location and context of the incident.
Claims of the video showing forced conversion in Pakistan
On 25 September 2024, a user on X (formerly Twitter) posted a video of a young woman being coerced by three to four men and women into signing a document. The caption of the video reads as follows:
“In 1st[sic] video, a Pakistani Hindu girl is forcibly converted to Islam by an Islamic Mullah who performs Nikah with her.”
Another user on X claimed that the video depicted a case of forced conversion on 28 September 2024. The video was posted with the following caption:
“Minorities are not safe in #Pakistan! This is the situation of minorities, especially women, who are forced to convert and then forced to marry! These visuals are so troubling to see! 1/2
#SavePakMinorities
@Taimur_Laal
@FearlessWolfess”
However, unlike the former post, this user did not specify if the woman in the video is from the Hindu community.
Interestingly, a user commented on the X post from 25 September, saying that the woman was neither Pakistani nor Hindu. Referencing the “earliest upload from September 3, 2023,” the user said that “it appears to be a case of forced divorce.”
They also claimed that the incident occurred in Bangladesh, offering a close-up view of the video’s keyframes that showed the Bangladeshi stamp on the document the woman was being forced to sign. A screenshot of this can be seen below:
To confirm the validity of this claim, Soch Fact Check conducted a Google search with the keywords “Bangladesh stamp paper” which resulted in similar and identical images to the one above. These can be seen below:
Soch Fact Check also reached out to a fact-checker from dismislab, an independent media research platform in Bangladesh, who verified that the stamp paper in the video accurately showed the Bangladeshi emblem. Though the fact-checker from dismislab was not able to confirm the context of the video, they assured us that the incident had taken place in Bangladesh, not Pakistan.
To further verify whether this was a case of forced conversion in Pakistan, Soch Fact Check reached out to a local journalist working on human rights and minority issues. Our source claimed that this incident did not occur in Pakistan, despite much debate on its location when it first circulated. They also mentioned Bangladesh as a likely location of where this video was filmed. However, as to what the dispute in the video was about, our source was unclear.
Interestingly, a post from 16 February 2024 on X that says the case is of forced divorce from Bangladesh, contains a screenshot of a post by the CHINGARI Project which has been marked as false. As seen in the screenshot below, the post claims that the video shows a “minor Hindu girl in Pakistan being forced to sign[sic] marriage agreement.”
The CHINGARI Project’s X page describes itself as “a social justice campaign aimed toward bringing awareness about the atrocities that young, innocent Hindu girls face.
A @hindupact effort.” (HinduPACT is a policy research and advocacy platform, an initiative of the World Hindu Council of America.)
Though it is unclear when CHINGARI Project made this post, it has since been deleted:
Claims of the video showing a forced divorce/marriage in Bangladesh
Taking further cues from the user’s comment on X, Soch Fact Check searched for the earliest upload of the video from 3 September 2023. This led us to a Facebook post from 3 September 2023 that was shared with the following caption in Bangla:
“মনের বিরুদ্ধে জোর করে তালাক দিলে সেই তালাক কি হয়?”
According to Google Translate, this reads as follows in English:
“If divorce is forced against the mind, what happens to that divorce?”
The video was posted as a reel by the same user six minutes later.
The following day, the user also posted a video of a woman expressing her sentiments about the incident in Bangla and eventually shared it as a reel too.
A fact-checker from dismislab helped us translate what the woman said into English as follows:
“The girl in the video may have married for love but her guardian is trying to force her to sign the divorce papers. But against her will, they may take the signature. But I feel very bad for her condition. I think the signature was taken by force at the end. But I don’t think they are completely divorced. I believe if this is asked to any Islamic scholar they will also say that their husband and wife bond is not severed because it is done against their will. I did not like this incident so I made this video.”
During this time, the video circulated on TikTok as well where it was similarly shared as early as 3 September 2023 with the claim that it shows a forced divorce. The post from 4 September by @shourovahmedshant is shown below:
Though it does not contain a caption, there is text in the video’s keyframes.
Feeding a screenshot of the text to OpenL, an AI language translation tool, Soch Fact Check found that the caption reads as follows in English:
“Love truly is blind.
A married man has deceived this girl while keeping a wife and children at home —
That’s why the girl’s parents are doing this to get her to sign the divorce papers.
Sign it, sister; your parents are doing this for your own good.”
The video was shared again on 11 September by @shourovahmedshant, but this time, without a caption or text in the keyframes.
However, over the month of September 2023, multiple other accounts on Facebook shared this video with the claim that it showed a young woman being forced to sign a marriage contract, not divorce papers, in Bangladesh.
These can be seen here, here, and here.
Several posts on Facebook and TikTok also claimed the woman was Muslim, which can be seen here, here, here, here, and here.
Soch Fact Check also came across a post about the video from 10 September 2023 by news agency Alerta Mundial:
According to Google translate, the caption reads as follows in English:
“🇧🇩 | TERRIBLE!: Moment when a Muslim minor in Bangladesh is forced by her mother and father to sign a wedding contract with a 40-year-old man.”
This post was also cited by ABC Noticias in their article on this incident, where they claimed the video was from Bangladesh and the woman was being forced to sign a marriage contract.
While the news articles cited above, and the claims on Facebook, TikTok, and X said that the incident took place in Bangladesh — there is a dispute over whether the video shows an act of forced divorce or marriage.
Regardless, claims that the video shows the woman being forced to sign a marriage document are suspect. As stated before, the document she is being coerced to sign is a Bangladeshi stamp paper, which does not resemble a standard Bangladeshi nikah-nama or marriage contract, which is shown below:
Source: Human Rights Watch
Claims of the video showing a workplace dispute in Bangladesh
On 11 September 2023, a post about the video was made on X by British-Bangladeshi journalist Dilly Hussain who is the deputy editor of 5Pillars, a Muslim news site based in the UK, and a columnist for Middle East Eye, as well as a political blogger for the Huffington Post.
Hussain claimed that the viral video does not depict a forced marriage in Bangladesh. Rather, it shows a workplace dispute, where the woman, a shop employee, is being forced to sign a confession after stealing money from her employer. A screenshot of this post is shown below:
On the same day, a post on X claimed that the video showed a forced marriage in Bangladesh. However, a user commented on this post, terming it fake news and claiming that the incident showed a workplace dispute. They also attached a picture of what appears to be a marriage document in Bangladesh, saying that the document the woman is being made to sign in the video is different. A screenshot of this comment is shown below:
The following day, a YouTube account posted a short that makes a similar claim that this incident of alleged forced marriage in Bangladesh was actually a workplace dispute. According to the short, the woman in the video was the employee of a garment store and, along with a friend of hers, was caught trying to steal money from the store.
The background of the video does show what appears to be a garment shop, with shirts that have price tags at the front. A screenshot of the video clearly reveals this as well:
Conclusion
While a number of claims are circulating about the incident shown in the video, Soch Fact Check can confirm that it does not show the forced conversion of a Hindu woman in Pakistan. The video originated in Bangladesh and not Pakistan.
Some reports by news outlets from 2023 suggested the video shows a case of forced marriage. However, it seems that the woman is being made to sign a Bangladeshi stamp paper and not a nikah-nama.
Other claims on social media alleged that the video shows a workplace dispute related to the employee of a garment store in Bangladesh and not a forced marriage. These claims are supported by the fact that the background of the video shows a garment shop, with shirts that have price tags at the front.
Hence, Soch Fact Check rates the claim that the video shows a forced conversion in Pakistan as false.
Virality
On X, the video was found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, the video was found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On TikTok, the video was found here, here, here, and here.
On YouTube, the video was found here.
Conclusion: This video does not show the forced conversion of a Hindu woman in Pakistan. While Soch Fact Check can confirm that the video is from Bangladesh, we could not find enough credible evidence to confirm whether it shows a forced marriage or a workplace dispute.
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Background image in cover photo: The Sunday Guardian
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