Exodus of illegal Bangladeshis from Bengal? No, viral video shows Kali idol immersion crowd in border village – Alt News

A video showing a huge crowd streaming through a barbed-wire border gate is widely viral on social media with the claim that it depicts the mass exodus of illegal Bangladeshis from West Bengal after the announcement of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state by the Election Commission.  

An X user, Deepak Sharma (@SonOfBharat7), shared the video on X accompanied by a caption which claims  “hordes of Bangladeshi Rohingya infiltrators are fleeing” from West Bengal post the SIR announcement. (Archive)

ये दरिंदो की भीड़ देख रहे हो हिन्दुओं…

ये तस्वीर बांग्लादेश भारत बॉर्डर की है…

पश्चिम बंगाल से लगी सीमा की…

जहाँ से झुण्ड के झुण्ड बांग्लादेशी रोहिंग्या घुसपैठिये SIR की घोषणा के बाद वापस भाग रहे हैं

अभी तो पार्टी शुरू हुईं है.. आगे आगे देखो होता है क्या 🖐️ pic.twitter.com/MShzlaqKCs

— Deepak Sharma (@SonOfBharat7) November 9, 2025

The post has garnered around 127,400 views.

Another X user, Baba Banaras (@RealBababanaras), sharing the same video, claimed that “reportedly” thousands of illegal Bangladeshis were going back to Bangladesh after SIR was ordered in West Bengal. (Archive)

Reportedly thousands of illegal Bangladeshis are going back to Bangladesh after SIR ordered in different states of India including West Bengal. This is just the beginning. After NRC, more than 5 crore illegal Bangladeshi & Rohingyas will be thrown out of India. pic.twitter.com/apbslyNIa9

— Baba Banaras™ (@RealBababanaras) November 9, 2025

X users Ocean Jain (@ocjain4) and AsiaWarZone (@AsiaWarZone), too, have shared the video with similar claims. The posts have around 80,000 and 1,50,000 views respectively.

Readers should note that X users liker Deepak Sharma (@SonOfBharat7), Baba Banaras (@RealBababanaras) and Ocean Jain (@ocjain4) amplify misinformation on a regular basis on social media. Alt News has previously debunked several misleading and false claims made by these accounts.  

The video is viral with similar claims on all social media platforms. A few of them can be seen below in the gallery. 

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A media outlet named The Central Post published a report on illegal Bangladeshis attempting to flee West Bengal. The report has a video embedded in it, which features a collage of clips. The viral video is among them. It is noteworthy that the collage contains another video which is actually from Bangladesh, but has been described as a scene of illegal immigrants leaving Bengal amidst the SIR exercise. Alt News has already debunked this video.

Fact Check

Several elements in the video raise doubts over the claim that the people seen in it are fleeing India to their original homeland, Bangladesh, amid an SIR-like drive by the government. Firstly, none of them are carrying any luggage, which would be the natural thing to do if one is going away for some time, even if not forever. Secondly, the crowd seems to be gleeful and excited. Thirdly, security personnel can be seen manning the gate on the border fencing and allowing people to cross freely, which, common sense suggests, would not have been the case if they were illegal immigrants.

These factors led us to doubt the authenticity of the claims.

When we tried reverse image search with multiple key frames of the viral video, one particular frame led us to a Facebook video by a user named Neha Mondal. In the reel, she can be heard saying she has come to Shikarpur to watch a ‘bisarjan’ or immersion.

Shikarpur is a village under Murutia police station area in the Karimpur II CD block of the Nadia district in West Bengal. It is famous for a Kali Puja which takes place at a locality called Funkatala, which is visited by thousands of people every year — not only locals, but those from far-off places. This is well documented.

We then contacted a local beautician whose contact number we found on Facebook. She told Alt News that the people seen in the video were going to witness the immersion of the Kali idol in the Mathabhanga River.

Mathabhanga is a transboundary river which originates from the Padma in Bangladesh and enters India at Gede in Nadia district, following which it bifurcates into Ichhamati and Churni. At Murutia, the river runs along the International Border. See the map below:

To find out more about the viral video, we contacted the Murutia police station in-charge, SI Nirmalya Dutta.

Dutta confirmed that the video was from Funkatala and the people were going to Nimtala Ghat on the bank of the Mathabhanga, to witness the immersion of the Kali idol.

“The border fencing and gate were built earlier this year. So the video is from this year. The Kali Puja here draws thousands of people. A similarly large crowd attends the immersion. This has been going on for decades. This year, the gathering was a little smaller in comparison to previous years since the gate and fencing have been built,” Dutta added.

“The riverbank is only a few meters from the fence. Across the river lies Bangladesh. Earlier, people would gather on that side as well to witness the immersion, but this has stopped in the last few years. The Indian side now has a single-fence border and a gate. It was opened for Durga Puja immersion as well as for Kali Puja immersion.”

Dutta sent us a photo of the exact spot where the crowd had gathered. The border fencing, the black gate and the two iron poles next to it that are visible in the viral video can also be spotted in the photo. See the comparison below:

To sum up, the viral video of a crowd crossing through a border gate has nothing to do with SIR in West Bengal. It shows a Kali Puja immersion gathering in a village on the International Border in Nadia district.

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