Claim: A video shows Bangladesh’s defence minister and its former army chief hung on a bridge amid the student-led protests in August 2024.
Fact: The clip does not show Bangladesh’s defence minister and its former army chief, but two unidentified individuals in the Baipayl area of its capital Dhaka. In fact, the defence ministry portfolio of the country was held by former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
On 8 August 2024, Soch Fact Check received a video on WhatsApp showing the bodies of two people hanging upside down from a pedestrian bridge, as traffic continued below and people gathered to record the incident.
The clip, which is two minutes and 41 seconds long, had the date “06/08/2024” superimposed on it, likely indicating that it was filmed on 6 August 2024.
It was accompanied by the following claim:
“Ex Army Chief and Defence Minister of Bangladesh hanged by the students of Bangladesh”
Student protests in Bangladesh
The Bangladesh protests began in June 2024 when the country’s supreme court overruled a decision by the government led by the former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wazed, to do away with a 30% public jobs quota for the 1971 fighters’ descendants in response to similar demonstrations in 2018. Students, who felt like their opportunities were restricted, demanded the system be made more merit-based.
The mass protests saw violence and clashes, arrests and detentions, and incidents of police firing directly at the demonstrators, which included students and teachers under the ‘Anti-discrimination Student Movement’ banner. They were also fuelled by discontent with the government and its suppression of rights. Multiple deaths and injuries were reported in the events that followed.
Read more: Does this video show Khaleda Zia being released from house arrest?
The government imposed a curfew and communications services were severely disrupted across Bangladesh in a move to quell the protests, according to multiple reports. Over 250 people were killed in the protests, according to Bengali-language newspaper Daily Manab Zamin. Among the deceased were police officers as well. Other sources stated that the death toll was over 400.
Eventually, Hasina — who had been in power since 2009 and previously ruled for another five years in the 1990s — resigned and fled to neighbouring India as a result of the pivotal move, which is now being called the “Gen Z revolution”. Bangladesh Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced her departure and immediately took charge, while President Mohammed Shahabuddin ordered the release of opposition leader and former prime minister, Khaleda Zia, from house arrest.
A few days later, on 8 August, Muhammad Yunus, an economist and Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate, was sworn in as the interim head of the state. His advisers include Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuyain, the 26-year-old Dhaka University students who are among the leaders of the ‘Anti-discrimination Student Movement’.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check ran a reverse image search using keyframes from the viral video and found that it was reposted by multiple YouTube accounts.
Many of the clips — here, here, here, here — do not have any identifying information. A large number of these videos have “been removed for violating YouTube’s policy on violent or graphic content”.
However, according to this video’s (archive) title — translated into English — the violent scene unfolded in front of the “Bipel Police Station” in Dhaka. A Google search of this name led to a page (archive) on Waze, a service providing realtime driving directions and traffic reports, instructing how to reach “Ashulia Police Station, R505, Baipayl” in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.
Two videos — here and here — have “Baipail, Ashulia” in their titles. While both have now been taken down, the text was visible in the preview available on Google Lens.
Related: Viral photo of protesters sleeping on a bed is from Sri Lanka, not Bangladesh
The title of another video (archive) translates to: “Dead bodies hanging on Savar Avar Bridge. No one should take the law into his own hands.” Searching for “Savar Bridge Bangladesh” on Google led to a 7 August 2024 article (archive) by Dhaka Tribune with the headline “At least 31 killed in clashes with police in Savar”. The report stated, “Several local residents in Ashulia reported that two bodies were found hanging upside down by their feet on a pedestrian bridge on the highway in front of Ashulia police station.”
The title of another video (archive) translates to: “People hanging two Indian policemen upside down in Ashulia”. When we searched the same on Google, the results led us to the same article by Dhaka Tribune. Another YouTube clip (archive) also claimed that the two bodies are of cops.
Two videos of the same incident — here and here (archived here and here, respectively) — have thumbnails with text that translates to “In front of Saipel Ashulia Police Station.”
Lastly, according to the title of two videos (archived here and here, respectively), the bodies of “unidentified persons are hanging in front of Ashulia police station in Savar”.
Apart from the videos, Soch Fact Check found that Bangladeshi media outlets Ajker Patrika (archive), Songbad Prokash (archive), and The Daily Star (archive) had also reported on the hanging dead bodies on 6, 7, and 8 August 2024, respectively. According to them, locals believed that the bodies were of officers from the Ashulia police station.
We were also able to geolocate the place seen in the viral video on Google Maps, which can be viewed below:
To confirm that it is the same location from the video, we used Google Maps to match the structure of the pedestrian bridge, road dividers, and the buildings in the background.
We also observed other landmarks visible on the left, such as Mercantile Bank Limited, Food Village Restaurant, Baipayl Central Jamia Masjid, and Meghna Bank, which can be identified through its brand colours, as well as the small shops in the background, advertisements of Metrocem Cement Limited, and the signboards of GPH Ispat and Akij Cement on the right.
Also read: 2013 photo from Bangladesh passed off as struggling Pakistanis
For further investigation, Soch Fact Check contacted Minhaj Aman, a fact-checker with dismislab, who provided us with the link to a video (archive) published on 6 August 2024 by YouTube channel Aliakbar vlogs531. According to its title, the hanging dead bodies are of unidentified persons, as it stated, “পাপ বাপকেউ ছাড়ে না, অজ্ঞাত ব্যক্তির, দুটি লাশ ঝুলিয়ে রাখা হয়েছে, সাভার আশুলিয়া থানার সামনে। [Sin forbids no one, two dead bodies of an unidentified person are hanged, in front of the Ashulia police station in Savar.]”
The video’s thumbnail echoed the same fact and included two phrases: “সাভার আশুলিয়া [Savar Ashulia]” and “দুটি অজ্ঞাত লাশ [Two unidentified bodies]”.
Most importantly, Aman confirmed to us that Bangladesh did not have a defence minister as Hasina herself held the portfolio. He also said some videos from the protests were being taken down rapidly due to their violent nature.
Moreover, a public hanging of a country’s defence minister is a significant enough development to be reported by well-known media outlets around the world. Since we did not find any such news reports either, Soch Fact Check concludes that the claim is false.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the video posted with the false claim here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook. It was also shared as a reel here, here, here, here, and here.
Multiple accounts, apparently supporting the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), also shared the video here, here, here, here, and here.
One of the most viral posts with the claim was viewed over 8,000 times.
The clip was also posted on X (formerly Twitter) here, here, here, here, and here. It was shared on YouTube here and here.
Conclusion: The clip does not show Bangladesh’s defence minister or former army chief but two unidentified individuals in the Baipayl area of the capital Dhaka. Moreover, the country’s defence ministry portfolio was held by former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Background image in cover photo: Bornil Amin
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