Fact Check: Video Of Bangladesh Volunteer Helping Homeless Man Goes Viral As ‘Forced Conversion Of Sadhu’ 

The volunteer who originally created the video has slammed the conversion claims as propaganda, saying his group provides 'support to helpless… people lying on the streets… regardless of religion’.

Screenshot of a viral post making the false claim.

Source : Facebook/Factly

A video going viral on social media (here, here, and here) claims to show a group of men approaching a homeless man. They forcefully hold him down and shave his dreadlocks and beard. The post claims that it shows a Hindu sadhu being compelled to convert to Islam in Bangladesh. Let’s verify the truth behind the video in this article.

The archived post can be found here.

Claim: The video shows a Hindu sadhu being compelled to convert to Islam in Bangladesh. Fact: The viral video does not show a Hindu sadhu being compelled to convert to Islam in Bangladesh. It was posted by Mahbub Sorker, a content creator running a voluntary organisation for destitute people. Additionally, Mahbub dismissed the claims calling them fake propaganda stating that he supports destitute and mentally ill individuals on the streets, regardless of their religion. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.

A reverse image search of the keyframes from the viral video led us to an extended version (archived) of the video, uploaded on YouTube on 26 October 2024 by the channel Mahbub Creation 4. The video is titled “What happened to the crazy person?”. According to the channel’s description, the content creator runs a voluntary organisation focused on helping homeless and neglected people living on the streets. At the 5:00-minute timestamp, Mahbub Sorker asks viewers to inform them about such people on the streets and provide family details about the man in the video, mentioning that he is in Subando Kasari Bazar, located in Keraniganj, Dhaka District, Bangladesh.

We found that his Facebook handle link was mentioned in the “About” section of his YouTube channel. Upon reviewing his Facebook page we found a video in which he dismissed (archived) the claims that he was forcefully compelling a Hindu sadhu to convert to Islam. He strongly condemned the claim, calling it a propaganda. He stated, “We provide support to helpless, destitute, and mentally ill people lying on the streets in poor conditions, regardless of their religion.”

We found several other videos on his YouTube channel showing him voluntarily helping homeless and neglected people living on the streets. You can watch the videos here, here, here, and here.

To sum up, a video of a Bangladeshi volunteer helping a destitute is falsely shared as a Hindu sadhu compelled to convert to Islam

Disclaimer: This story was originally published by Factly, as part of the Shakti Collective. Except for the headline and excerpt, this story has not been edited by ABP Live staff.