Bangladesh Train Station Footage Misrepresented as Muslims Sabotaging Indian Train

In a troubling case of viral misinformation, social media users across India have been widely sharing a video that falsely portrays Bangladeshi children as Muslim saboteurs targeting Indian railways.

The video, which shows several children climbing onto a stationary train and one child apparently striking a coupling with a rock, has been circulating on Instagram and Facebook with inflammatory captions that frame the incident as evidence of internal threats to India.

“We are not afraid of the Pakistan that is outside our border. We are afraid of the thousands of mini-Pakistans that exist within India,” reads one Hindi-language caption accompanying the video on Instagram from January 14. Other posts featured banners warning that “The threat is not from the Pakistani army, but from the religious ideologies present within India.”

Comments on these posts reveal the dangerous way the misleading content has been interpreted, with users describing the footage as evidence of “Jihadi thinking” and “terrorist training” being instilled in children’s minds. One comment specifically accused the children of implementing “a known strategy of Islamic barbarians” by using juveniles to commit crimes against Indian Railways.

However, an investigation has confirmed the video has no connection to India whatsoever. The footage was originally captured and shared by Alamin, a content creator and local journalist, who filmed it at Kamalapur Station in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on December 28, 2025. Alamin posted the original higher-quality version to Facebook with a Bengali caption that simply stated: “All the boys are on the train. Children are working in Kamalapur.”

When contacted about the misuse of his footage, Alamin explained to AFP that the children were attempting to “take metal parts from the engine coupling of a train when it entered the platform.” He added that children in the area commonly play near the railway station and sometimes help staff to earn small amounts of money.

In a later comment on his original Facebook post, Alamin clarified that despite claims circulating on social media, the children were not stealing. Visual evidence further confirms the video’s Bangladeshi origin, including the distinctive livery on the train matching Bangladeshi passenger trains and Bengali writing visible on the side of the carriage.

The false framing of this video comes against a backdrop of heightened tensions between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. In May 2025, the nuclear-armed neighbors engaged in a four-day conflict that killed at least 70 people, following Indian accusations that Pakistan supported a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir—claims Pakistan denied. The conflict involved extensive use of drones along with intense missile and artillery exchanges.

This is not the first instance of such misinformation circulating online. AFP has previously debunked similar false claims, including allegations that videos showed Bangladeshi refugees stealing from Indian train passengers.

The spread of such misleading content highlights the ongoing challenge of religious and nationalist tensions being inflamed through social media, where contextual details are often removed to serve divisive narratives. The deliberate misrepresentation of children’s actions in Bangladesh as evidence of religious sabotage in India demonstrates how easily visual media can be weaponized to promote prejudice and suspicion between communities.

Fact-checking organizations continue to play a crucial role in identifying and correcting such false narratives before they can further damage intercommunal relations in an already sensitive geopolitical region.