By Sachin Baghel
A scripted video from Bangladesh showing a man confront his octogenarian grandfather at an arbitration forum for marrying the former's wife in an act of 'halala' is circulating among Indian social media users as a real incident.
BOOM found that the video has been filmed by a Youtuber from Bangladesh named Sharmin Shakil for entertainment purposes and social awareness.
The video shows a young man confronting his wife and an aged man at a public forum for marrying each other through the Islamic way of 'halala'. Halala is an Islamic practice where a woman after being divorced through triple talaq is married off to another man and consummates the marriage. She then gets divorced to marry her former husband in the ritual called 'halala' marriage. 'Halala' marriage is known as 'hilla biye' in Bangladesh.
Scripted or dramatised videos are a growing phenomenon in Indian and the sub continent. These videos often have provocative or shocking themes in order to go viral on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. However, increasingly they are cropped and used to spread misinformation or harden harmful stereotypes about communities.
The video has been captioned in Hindi as, "Halala, this is the beauty of religion. Got his own grandfather to do his wife's halala. The grandfather enjoyed it so much that he made her his wife permanently. Along with the grandfather, the wife also turned out to be unfaithful." (Original text in Hindi:*#हलाला; ये मजहब की खूबसुर्ती...अपने ही दादाजी से बीवी का हलाला करवाया। दादाजी को इतना मज़ा आया कि उन्होंने बीवी परमानेंटली ही दबा ली। दादाजी तो दादाजी, बीवी भी बेवफा निकली* )
The link of the archive can be found here.
Also Read:मनाली में हालिया भूस्खलन के दावे से जम्मू-श्रीनगर हाईवे का पुराना वीडियो वायरल
Many users also shared this video on Facebook with the same claim; Click here, here and here to see the archives of the posts.
Fact Check
BOOM first observed the viral video carefully and noticed that people can be seen laughing in the background; even at several instances the wife can be seen breaking into a laugh while being confronted by the husband.
We then extracted a few screengrabs from the video and performed a Google reverse image search and found a longer version of the viral video posted on July 8, 2023 on a Facebook page named 'গণমাধ্যম ব্লগ' (Mainstream Blog). In this video, we can see the viral part from the timestamp 5 minutes 56 seconds onwards.
The caption with the video states that the content is fictional. It further describes the video as a play through which an attempt has been made to show the reality of the society.
We then ran a related keyword search and found a Bangladeshi YouTube channel named Sharmin Shakil which contained the longer version of the viral video, uploaded on November 25, 2022.
The title of the video reads as, "Halala marriage done between an 80 year old grandfather and a young girl." (Original text in Bengali: ৮০ বছরের দাদার সাথে ছোট মেয়ের হিল্লা বিয়ে দিলো জামাই | রহস্য জনক ঘটনা | Sharmin Shakil 2022)
An excerpt from the description of the video reads, "This video is made for entertainment and if you like it, then watch the channel's other videos as well'. The contents of the page show many other such scripted videos.
With Inputs from Tausif Akbar, BOOM Bangladesh.
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