Bengali Hindu cricketer Liton Das has clarified that his home was not torched during student-led protests that toppled ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina after footage of a burning house was shared hundreds of times online in neighbouring India alongside the false claim. Although there have been reports of attacks on Hindus and other religious minorities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh amid the unrest, local police told AFP the house in the video belongs to Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, a former cricketer turned politician from Hasina’s ousted Awami League party.
“This burning house belongs to Bangladeshi Hindu cricketer Liton Das. If an international cricketer is not safe in Bangladesh, think about the situation of common Bangladeshi Hindus,” read a post shared on social media site X on August 7, 2024.
It was shared in neighbouring Hindu-majority India, which has a deeply intertwined history with Bangladesh long before they were partitioned out of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.
The post included a picture of a burning house and a photo of Bangladeshi Hindu cricketer Das (archived link).
“Divide Bangladesh in (sic) 2 parts. Make a separate country for Bangladeshi Hindus. This is the only solution,” the post, reshared more than 600 times, added.
Weeks of deadly clashes between protesters and security forces in Bangladesh culminated in Hasina quitting and fleeing to India on August 3, bringing an end to her 15 years of autocratic rule.
After her abrupt resignation, there were numerous reports of attacks against religious minorities including Hindu households, temples and businesses (archived link).
Hindus are the largest minority faith in mostly Muslim Bangladesh and are considered a steadfast support base for Hasina’s Awami League party.
A similar false claim was also shared elsewhere on X and Facebook. The owner of the property, however, has been misidentified.
Baseless rumour
In a statement posted on his official Facebook page on August 9, Das said: “There has been a news story broadcast on various media recently about an attack on our home, which has no truth. No one should listen to these rumours. Me and my family are completely safe so far” (archived link).
He went on to call for an end to the violence and said the country “should move forward together regardless of all religions”.
A reverse image search on Google of a keyframe from the circulating video found the house corresponds to one in longer footage published on the YouTube account of Prothom Alo, Bangladesh’s largest daily, on August 5 (archived link).
The video’s Bengali-language caption said the house belonged to former cricketer and Awami League lawmaker Mashrafe Bin Mortaza.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared with the false claim (left) and the footage published by Prothom Alo (right) with the corresponding features highlighted by AFP:
A picture showing the same house was previously published by local news outlet Jago News 24 in a June 24, 2021 story that identified Mashrafe as the owner (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the burning house seen in the false posts (left) and the picture from Jago News 24 (right) with corresponding features marked:
Mehedi Hasan, police chief of Narail district told AFP the house in the video belongs to Mashrafe.
“It was attacked and burned on Aug 5 but no cases were filed in this regard,” he said.
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