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13th National Parliamentary ElectionFact CheckPolitical

Viral photos of alleged meeting between BNP leaders and ‘RAW’ official are fake

Four photos have been circulated on social media claiming that Abdul Awal Mintoo, BNP’s parliamentary candidate for the Feni-3 constituency and the party’s Vice Chairman, and Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, BNP’s candidate for the Chittagong-11 constituency and member of the party’s Standing Committee, held a meeting with an alleged official of India’s intelligence agency ‘RAW’ (Research and Analysis Wing), Colonel Gaurav Dogra, at The Oberoi Hotel located near the agency’s headquarters in New Delhi.

See some posts circulated on Facebook with this claim: here, here, here, here, here.

See posts on other platforms with the same claim: X, Threads, Instagram.

Fact Check

The Rumor Scanner team’s investigation reveals that the photos circulated claiming to show a meeting between two BNP leaders and an alleged ‘RAW’ official are not real. In reality, the discussed photos have been created using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Investigating this matter, it is known that the information containing this claim was posted from a Facebook account named ‘Shafin Rahman’ at 7:29 PM on January 30. The post claimed the meeting citing several alleged Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) platforms. At the same time, the release of a video was mentioned, and the video was attached in the comments section of the post.

Subsequently, following the lead of that video, the same video was found on an X account named Indus Sentinel Grid. The video was published at 8:26 AM that day. Observing the video, it is seen presenting the claim that meetings took place at various times with Bangladeshi political figures at The Oberoi Hotel, located near the headquarters of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in New Delhi.

The video shows four photos of these alleged meetings. Then, a profile picture of Colonel Gaurav Dogra is presented as an alleged ‘RAW’ official, with his name, identity, and some personal information added. Similarly, photos of BNP leaders Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury and Abdul Awal Mintoo are also shown in profile format in the video. In their cases too, various personal information including name, age, political identity, and travel-related information are mentioned.

From the About section of that X account, it is known that it is being operated from Pakistan.

Subsequently, Rumor Scanner analyzed the four photos circulated as scenes of these alleged meetings separately.

In the first photo, BNP leader Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury is seen talking to the alleged ‘RAW’ official Colonel Gaurav Dogra in a hotel lobby. In the photo, Amir Khosru is seen wearing a blue suit and a sky-blue shirt. On the other hand, Gaurav Dogra is seen in a cream-colored full-sleeve shirt. A waiter is seen on the left side of the photo, who has been identified as the first person for the convenience of investigation. The location of the photo is referred to as the first location.

In the second photo, BNP leader Abdul Awal Mintoo, Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, and the alleged ‘RAW’ official Gaurav Dogra are seen sitting together. Here, Amir Khosru is in a cream-colored shirt, Mintoo in a sky-blue shirt, and Dogra is in a cream-colored full-sleeve shirt like in the first photo. A person is seen on the right side of the photo, who has been identified as the second person. This location is referred to as the second location.

In the third photo too, Amir Khosru and the alleged Gaurav Dogra are seen. While Amir Khosru is again seen in the blue suit like in the first photo, the alleged Gaurav Dogra is seen here in a white half-sleeve shirt. It is worth noting that the second person from the second photo or second location is also seen on the right side of this photo in the same posture. However, like the alleged Dogra, his shirt has also become half-sleeved here.

The fourth and final photo shows Abdul Awal Mintoo and the alleged Gaurav Dogra. Mintoo is here in a sky-blue full-sleeve shirt and Dogra in a cream-colored full-sleeve shirt. As before, in this photo too, the second location and that second person from the third place are seen in the same posture.

The clothes observed in the four photos are a blue suit, a cream-colored full-sleeve shirt, a sky-blue full-sleeve shirt, and a white half-sleeve shirt.

Investigating this matter, a report published in the Indian media outlet The Hindu on June 21, 2018, was found. A photo of BNP leaders Abdul Awal Mintoo, Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, and Humayun Kabir is attached to that report. According to the report’s information, this was a photo from their visit to New Delhi as top leaders of the opposition party.

In that photo, Abdul Awal Mintoo is seen in a blue suit and a sky-blue full-sleeve shirt, and Amir Khosru is seen in a cream-colored full-sleeve shirt. Three of the four types of clothing used in the four viral photos have been taken from this photo. However, new photos have been created using artificial intelligence by placing these clothes on different people’s bodies at different times.

Rumor Scanner found two photos ([suspicious link removed], [suspicious link removed]) from the review section of The Oberoi Hotel in Delhi, whose background and furniture arrangement match the viral photos.

Altogether, it appears that four fake photos were created by combining a photo of the alleged Gaurav Dogra, a 2018 photo of BNP leaders, and two separate photos of The Oberoi Hotel.

Comparison: Rumor Scanner

Another important point is that in the picture shown in the profile of the alleged Gaurav Dogra in the video published on X, he is seen wearing a white half-sleeve shirt and has an ID card in his pocket. This same ID card is also seen in the same position in the third photo. That is, the new photo has been made by cropping or editing the photo from the same source, which makes the artificial nature of the photos even clearer.

A widely used tool for photo editing with AI in recent times is Google’s Artificial Intelligence. Suspecting that these photos were also created with Google’s AI, the photos were verified using Google’s SynthID technology through Gemini. This technology is capable of detecting invisible digital watermarks added to content created with Google’s AI. Using SynthID technology, Gemini reported that some part of each of the four photos was created or edited using Google AI.

Subsequently, verifying the photos on the separate portal for SynthID courtesy of Boom Bangladesh yielded similar results.

Therefore, the photos circulated claiming to show scenes of a meeting between two BNP leaders and an alleged ‘RAW’ official are AI-generated.

Sources

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