A video claiming that homes belonging to the Hindu community were being set on fire in Nangalkot, Cumilla, has spread on social media. However, verification by digital investigative outlet The Dissent found that the video actually shows a fire at the house of a Muslim farmer named Shah Alam. According to his wife, the fire started from a refrigerator inside the house.
The 13-second video was posted from a personal Facebook profile with the caption: “Sanatani homes being set on fire, Nangalkot, Bangladesh!” (spelling unchanged from the original). Text overlaid on the video read: “The condition of Sanatanis, Nangalkot, Bangladesh.” The clip shows a house beside a road on fire, with the surrounding area filled with black smoke.
To trace the video’s origin, several keyframes were taken and run through a reverse image search. This led to a video published on August 11 on a Facebook page called “Nangalkot 24.” The post’s caption read: “Fire incident 200 yards south of Dipjol Market in Moukara union, Nangalkot.” Several scenes in this video matched the circulating clip.
A video report published the same day on another Facebook page, “Bartaman TV,” was also found. The report, titled “Farmer’s dream burns to ashes in Nangalkot fire,” revealed that the fire had occurred at the house of Nangalkot farmer Shah Alam. In the report, his wife, Zohra Begum, said the fire started from a refrigerator inside the house.
A subsequent search using relevant keywords also turned up a report on the incident from a daily newspaper. The report named Shah Alam as the owner of the house damaged in the fire.