Revealed! The truth behind the Bangladeshi fan image showing Indian flag on a dog ahead of ICC Champions Trophy semi-final

India v Bangladesh semi-finals, ICC Champions Trophy 2017:The photoshopped image that shows Bangladesh is an old image used for clickbait

By: Ankit Banerjee |
June 14, 2017 1:50 pm

Indian media (including us) have again become a victim of fake viral news. Since yesterday, all major news websites including prominent ones like India Today, NewsX and Deccan Chronicle and viral sites like RajinikantvsCID and Crictracker carried a story about an image floating on social media that showed a tiger chasing a dog. The tiger was draped in Bangladeshi flag while the dog was in Indian tricolour. Needless to say this infuriated the Indians. All news websites carried headlines like “Bangladesh drapes India flag around a dog ahead of ICC Champions Trophy semi-finals”, “ICC Champions Trophy: Bangladesh start playing ugly ahead of semi-finals vs India” and “Tiranga disrespect: Bangladeshi cricket fans insult Indian national flag on social media”. Even we fell for it and carried the story with headline “A Bangladeshi fan insults Indian flag ahead of semi-finals. The sheer audacity will make your EAR’S BLEED”.

A few hours later, when we tried to track the origin of the image. We accept we should have done this before filing the story. We realised the image is not recent. Yes, the image is quite offending, especially keeping in mind the friendly relationship between India and Bangladesh. Politically India has played a huge role in Bangladesh’s liberation in 1971 from Pakistan. Bangladesh is the surprise entrant in the ICC Champions Trophy semi-final.

A simple Google search of the offending image shows that it to be dated as back as 2015 and then in 2016 during Asia Cup T20.

pic.twitter.com/ZPRmj892KC

— bangla _____ imo 05 (@22dbea180a2240e) June 19, 2015

India will play Bangladesh on the 15th of June 2017 in semi-final 2. Bangladesh are no more a team anyone can take lightly and they proved that against New Zealand. India will be well aware of this fact and will be leaving no stones unturned come the clash. For India, it is about defending this title which they won way back in 2013.