A news-report that claims police members have broken eggs of a teenage egg seller became viral on Facebook in Bangladesh after several news portals published stories with related video footage on the incident.
The online portal of Somoy TV (www.somoynews.tv) published a story on the incident, occured in Madhya Pradesh, India, claiming that two members of police were involved in the occurrence. The Somoy TV’s news portal accused the police members of overturning the cart of the egg seller for not giving them bribes. Since it was not mentioned in the headline that the incident took place in India, many readers in Bangladesh thought the incident happened in Bangladesh.
According to the reports published in India’s mainstream news-media, the 14-year-old egg seller used to sell eggs on Indore Road in Madhya Pradesh. On July 23, 2020, two staff from the Indore Municipal Corporation demanded Rs. 100 bribe from the boy. As the egg seller disagreed to bribe the municipal employees, they overturned the cart carrying eggs.
A number of internet-based news-portals operated from Bangladesh including the Somoy TV online mentioned in their stories that members of police were involved in overturning the cart.
On July 28, 2020, the verified Facebook page of Bangladesh police tells that stories published on the incident by the Bangladeshi news-media created confusion amongst the Bangladeshi netizens as it was not mentioned in the headlines that the incident happened in India not Bangladesh.
However, the FactKhuji’s investigation did not find involvement of Indian police with the incident.
