#FactCheck - Bangladesh video falsely shared as BSF arresting an infiltrator at Bengal border
Executive Summary
A video showing security personnel overpowering a man is being widely shared on social media with the claim that it shows the Border Security Force (BSF) arresting an infiltrator attempting to cross the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal. However, research by CyberPeace Research Wing found that the claim is false. The viral video is from Bangladesh and is unrelated to India or the BSF.
Claim
An X user shared the viral video claiming: “He was crossing the Bengal border from beneath the barbed fencing when the BSF caught him on the spot.”
The post was circulated as an incident from the India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal.
Fact Check
To verify the claim, we extracted keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search. During the research, we found the same video posted on 21 March 2026 by an X handle named “Niru Nahar.”
According to the caption of that post, the video showed Bangladesh Border Guards arresting BNP leader Mizan, also known as “Baba Mizan,” near the border.
Further research led us to a Facebook post uploaded on 22 March 2026 by Bangladeshi news platform Jono Pulse. The post identified the detained individual as “Juel,” an alleged drug trafficker from Chapainawabganj, and stated that he had been arrested by the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB).
Chapainawabganj is located in Bangladesh, confirming that the video is unrelated to West Bengal or the BSF.
Conclusion
The viral claim is misleading. The video does not show the BSF arresting an infiltrator at the Bengal border. It is actually from Bangladesh and depicts a separate incident involving Border Guard Bangladesh personnel.
Related Blogs
Executive Summary:
A video circulating on social media claims to show a live elephant falling from a moving truck due to improper transportation, followed by the animal quickly standing up and reacting on a public road. The content may raise concerns related to animal cruelty, public safety, and improper transport practices. A detailed examination using AI content detection tools, visual anomaly analysis indicates that the video is not authentic and is likely AI generated or digitally manipulated.
Claim:
The viral video (archive link) shows a disturbing scene where a large elephant is allegedly being transported in an open blue truck with barriers for support. As the truck moves along the road, the elephant shifts its weight and the weak side barrier breaks. This causes the elephant to fall onto the road, where it lands heavily on its side. Shortly after, the animal is seen getting back on its feet and reacting in distress, facing the vehicle that is recording the incident. The footage may raise serious concerns about safety, as elephants are normally transported in reinforced containers, and such an incident on a public road could endanger both the animal and people nearby.
Fact Check:
After receiving the video, we closely examined the visuals and noticed some inconsistencies that raised doubts about its authenticity. In particular, the elephant is seen recovering and standing up unnaturally quickly after a severe fall, which does not align with realistic animal behavior or physical response to such impact.
To further verify our observations, the video was analyzed using the Hive Moderation AI Detection tool, which indicated that the content is likely AI generated or digitally manipulated.
Additionally, no credible news reports or official sources were found to corroborate the incident, reinforcing the conclusion that the video is misleading.
Conclusion:
The claim that the video shows a real elephant transport accident is false and misleading. Based on AI detection results, observable visual anomalies, and the absence of credible reporting, the video is highly likely to be AI generated or digitally manipulated. Viewers are advised to exercise caution and verify such sensational content through trusted and authoritative sources before sharing.
- Claim: The viral video shows an elephant allegedly being transported, where a barrier breaks as it moves, causing the animal to fall onto the road before quickly getting back on its feet.
- Claimed On: X (Formally Twitter)
- Fact Check: False and Misleading
Introduction
When Tamil Nadu Police arrested a man from Vellore in May 2026 on suspicion of being the point person helping Indian youth to be smuggled into cyber scam compounds in Cambodia, the papers led with the accused. They shouldn't have led with the accused but with the system. The arrest, one in a long string of them in Tamil Nadu, Madurai, and other states, is not simply another one-off policing victory. Rather, the arrest gives us an insight into a larger, darker world: an international criminal organisation that has successfully combined human trafficking and cybercrime, a new trend in criminality that specialists are calling 'cyber slavery.'
What Is Cyber Slavery?
“Cyber slavery” involves trafficking persons under the pretence of employment, forcing them into committing online fraud to serve criminal enterprises. Victims are not merely victims of the work they are forced to do; they are often turned into culprits as they become complicit in victimising others. Trafficked victims are compelled to participate in frauds targeted at unsuspecting victims all around the globe. These activities, organised into robust criminal schemes, involve victims of sex or labour trafficking who are forced into operating romance scams or the so-called "pig butchering" scams that defraud people of their investment in cryptocurrency, all in heavily secured complexes guarded with threats of violence and torture. The extent of the problem is enormous, with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights estimating in a 2023 report that there are over 100,000 victims of cyber scam compounds in Cambodia and another 120,000 in Myanmar. Schemes throughout Southeast Asia were projected to commit as much as $39.9 billion in fraudulent schemes a year.
Why Southeast Asia? The Geography of Organised Crime
In order to answer why Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and the surrounding regions have developed into the cyber slavery hub of the world, we can draw together an array of structural reasons:
- Casino clampdown and crime diversification: Cambodia's ban on online gambling in 2019 broke down established casino-related criminal networks. This saw old casinos and Special Economic Zones turn into cyber scam compound operations.
- Corruption and state complicity: A pre-existing environment of corruption and involvement of politically linked figures permitted scamming networks to flourish, and the armed groups in the border areas of Myanmar are reportedly complicit in these operations through supplying land and protection for the networks to operate in.
- Poor governance in the border areas: The lack of state control in the frontier areas of Myanmar provided the criminal networks with a secure sanctuary in which they could operate with impunity and cross borders to escape crackdowns and move their operations.
- Post-pandemic growth: The economic stress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in the supply of vulnerable individuals available to fill the scam networks, as well as unprecedented profit margins on scams.
The Recruitment Pipeline: How Are Indian Youth Trapped?
The typical journey from an Indian town or village to a locked compound in Southeast Asia follows the same narrative:
- The bait: On platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram, gangs lure with posts of lucrative overseas employment for IT work, customer service, data entry, and digital marketing with attractive, albeit feasible, pay packages (Rs. 80,000 to Rs. 1.5 lakh per month) and destinations such as Thailand and Singapore added for a veneer of genuineness.
- The recruiters: Local agents who gain trust, arrange visas and flight tickets, and collect the application fees are key intermediaries. Cases registered in Vellore and Madurai hint at recruitment agents receiving a commission for each person successfully smuggled into a trap, linked to larger travel and immigration networks.
- The lie: Victims are assured that they will be working legitimately in Thailand, but on reaching the border and crossing over, they find themselves pushed into scam compounds in neighbouring countries and have their passports, mobile phones and devices confiscated, thus rendering any escape attempt futile.
- The trap: In the interim, fake interviews, false job promises and convincing flight tickets serve to maintain the facade until the victims are forced to participate in cyber-fraud schemes.
The Architecture of Coercion: Life Inside the Scam Compounds
It is in these compounds that the fates of the victims become known. Survivor accounts, investigations and UN human rights reports provide evidence of these circumstances. These compounds are often surrounded by barbed wire fences, monitored with cameras and heavily guarded. Once a potential victim is captured, they are stripped of their passports and any other electronic devices, preventing them from being able to contact the outside world or to escape. Workers are allocated stringent targets, ranging from the number of potential victims they must solicit for scams and the amount of money they must acquire through such scams. Failure to do so, or perceived disobedience, may lead to beatings, electroshock treatment, starvation and long periods in confinement. These beatings are supplemented with psychological torture, with scammers assuring their victims that they owe money for their journey, stay and training. This method of debt bondage keeps people at the compound even when the opportunity for escape is presented to them. The victims are then forced to take part in more complex online scams, which involve romance scams, fake investment scams, and impersonation scams using scripts and with supervision. In some cases, families will be encouraged to pay for their captive relatives' release by ransom, whereas those who refuse to comply or meet performance requirements may be sold and transferred to another compound as a piece of property within a transnational criminal network.
Cybercrime Is No Longer Just About Hacking
This emergency challenges the existing notion of cybercrime. The scam compound of Southeast Asia is not about a lonely hacker or a standalone breach; it is a form of organised cyber slavery in which trafficked individuals are made to commit financial fraud on an industrial level.
The probe of India's NIA found that recruitment is done in the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Transport agents in Chennai and Madurai provide logistics, and Dubai and Bangkok act as transit points on the way to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. It makes use of cryptocurrency wallets, shadow banking, and shell companies for the movement of funds across international borders. Companies such as the Huione Group has been accused of facilitating billions of dollars in financial transactions for scam infrastructure before receiving sanctions from the U.S.
To illustrate the threat landscape, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on 19 entities spread across Myanmar and Cambodia and said that cyber scam operations looted $10 billion worth last year. Also, cryptocurrency transactions related to trafficking crimes jumped by 85% last year, which speaks to the expanding nature of the global criminal infrastructure.
India's Exposure: A National Vulnerability
The scale of exposure for India is large and expanding. The most likely victims are educated, and aspirational young men and women from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, seeking work abroad, which perfectly aligns with the primary target of such human trafficking networks.
Repeated incidents of people from Tamil Nadu falling victim to these networks have come to light. As far back as 2022, the chief minister wrote to the prime minister that close to 300 Indians, roughly 50 Tamils included, were being held in Myanmar. The Madurai-Cambodia case that came to light in 2026 revealed an entire network spanning Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, with authorities believing that thousands of Indians might have been trafficked there over the past three years. Such cases from Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and some northern Indian states have been reported. Last year, India had to charter Air Force flights to rescue over 549 Indians from cyber scam centres along the Myanmar-Thailand border.
The Indian embassy in Phnom Penh assisted the Indian nationals along with the CBI, MEA, and NIA in the rescue of 67 Indians in September 2024; however, these operations are largely reactive in the face of the vast and evolving transboundary crisis.
Prevention
The best solution is awareness. The following are tangible signs that a job offer might be a lead to trafficking:
Red Flags within the job offer:
- Receiving unsolicited recruitment messages on WhatsApp, Telegram or Instagram from unknown numbers/contacts.
- Offer of unbelievably high salaries in undefined roles like ‘data entry,’ ‘online marketing’ or ‘customer service’ outside India.
- Request for upfront money to cover costs of visas, travel, accommodation, and training.
- Job offers to places in Thailand or Singapore involving complex transit routes through other countries.
- An interview process entirely through messaging apps, where the company has no real office address or registration number.
- Urgency and/or confidentiality required.
Verification:
- Check if the recruiter is registered on MEA's e-Migrate portal-this is a portal where MEA lists authorised overseas recruiters.
- Verify the authenticity of the company through its business registration with official registries in the foreign country.
- Contact the Indian Embassy/Consulate in that foreign country if something doesn't add up about the offer.
- Do not hand over your passport to your employer on arrival; it is standard practice for recruiters working as traffickers to confiscate it.
What to do if trapped:
- Contact the closest Indian embassy or consulate immediately.
- Call the MEA overseas helpline: 1800-11-3090.
- Lodge a report on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (cybercrime.gov.in).
Policy Imperatives
On their own, individual consciousness cannot undo such a massive criminal infrastructure. India has to enforce the Emigration Act rigorously, implement mandatory licensing of recruitment agents and create a specialised task force consisting of NIA, CBI, MEA and the states’ cybercrime units. Pre-departure orientations should also become mandatory for migrant workers who go to Southeast Asia. Globally, India needs to work more closely with Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos via intel sharing protocols, victim repatriations and action against scam compounds. Financial probes must be on par with enforcement investigations to catch up with the perpetrators’ network, the cryptocurrency and hawala channels that facilitate money laundering and finance trafficking operations, as that would severely hit these networks.
Conclusion
This arrest of the recruiter in Vellore is just a small piece of a larger network. What we see in these instances is the marriage of cybercrime, trafficking, and financial fraud into a larger transnational ecosystem that systematically preys on the economic vulnerability of individuals. These young Indians are not simply falling for scams; they are being systematically targeted, recruited, trafficked, and forced into these criminal operations by a networked structure. The scam compounds in Cambodia and along the border of Myanmar and Thailand are only the end of a process that very likely starts with a convincing job offer on social media. Fighting cyber slavery will not be as simple as more arrests; we need education and international efforts, as well as policy responses that match the scope and scale of the problem.
References
- https://the420.in/78415-2vellore-man-cambodia-cyber-slavery-trafficking-case/
- https://the420.in/madhan-vadivel-cambodia-cyber-slavery-trafficking-racket-investigation/
- https://www.newsonair.gov.in/tamil-nadu-police-arrest-key-recruiter-in-cambodia-cyber-slavery-racket/
- https://kashmirdotcom.in/2026/05/16/cambodia-linked-human-trafficking-cyber-slavery-racket-nia-chargesheets-five-including-absconding-kingpin/
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/16/more-than-1000-arrested-in-cambodian-cyber-scam-raids
- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/why-southeast-asias-online-scam-industry-is-so-hard-to-shut-down
- https://www.cfr.org/articles/how-myanmar-became-global-center-cyber-scams
- https://www.amlrightsource.com/resources/scam-states-the-cybercrime-corruption-complex-in-southeast-asia-and-the-collapse-of-anti-money-laundering-enforcement
- https://newlinesinstitute.org/global-security-mil-priorities/cybercrimes-human-trafficking-and-cryptocurrency-in-southeast-asias-special-economic-zones/
- https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2026/03/21/lured-by-jobs-sold-into-slavery-indias-crackdown-on-cyber-trafficking-continues.html
Executive Summary:
In recent times an image showing the President of AIMIM, Asaduddin Owaisi holding a portrait of Hindu deity Lord Rama, has gone viral on different social media platforms. After conducting a reverse image search, CyberPeace Research Team then found that the picture was fake. The screenshot of the Facebook post made by Asaduddin Owaisi in 2018 reveals him holding Ambedkar’s picture. But the photo which has been morphed shows Asaduddin Owaisi holding a picture of Lord Rama with a distorted message gives totally different connotations in the political realm because in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Asaduddin Owaisi is a candidate from Hyderabad. This means there is a need to ensure that before sharing any information one must check it is original in order to eliminate fake news.
Claims:
AIMIM Party leader Asaduddin Owaisi standing with the painting of Hindu god Rama and the caption that reads his interest towards Hindu religion.
Fact Check:
In order to investigate the posts, we ran a reverse search of the image. We identified a photo that was shared on the official Facebook wall of the AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi on 7th April 2018.
Comparing the two photos we found that the painting Asaduddin Owaisi is holding is of B.R Ambedkar whereas the viral image is of Lord Rama, and the original photo was posted in the year 2018.
Hence, it was concluded that the viral image was digitally modified to spread false propaganda.
Conclusion:
The photograph of AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi holding up one painting of Lord Rama is fake as it has been morphed. The photo that Asaduddin Owaisi uploaded on a Facebook page on 7 Apr 2018 depicted him holding a picture of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. This photograph was digitally altered and the false captions were written to give an altogether different message of Asaduddin Owaisi. It has even highlighted the necessity of fighting fake news that has spread widely through social media platforms especially during the political realm.
- Claim: AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi was holding a painting of the Hindu god Lord Rama in his hand.
- Claimed on: X (Formerly known as Twitter)
- Fact Check: Fake & Misleading
