A video of an altercation at a toll plaza in Bangladesh has been shared hundreds of times in Pakistan alongside a false claim it shows supporters of ex-prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. The posts circulated as PTI demonstrators held a rally in the eastern megacity of Lahore following a series of protests calling for Khan’s release from prison.
“These ill-mannered people, instead of paying the toll tax for their car, they resorted to destroying (the toll booth). This is the real face of PTI,” read an Urdu-language caption alongside the video on Facebook on September 22, 2024.
It shows a yellow truck transporting people through a toll plaza. One man wearing traditional Islamic dress approaches the tollgate barrier, and attempts to pull it down before it eventually swings open.
Some of the truck’s passengers then get down from the vehicle and appear to gather in groups around the tollbooth employees. Moments later, they get back on the truck before it drives through the toll gate.
The false claim emerged shortly after PTI held a rally in Lahore on September 21 which called for the release of Khan.
The party has faced a sweeping crackdown since Khan was jailed in August last year on a series of charges he said were politically motivated and designed to keep him from power.
Similar posts with over 900 shares were posted here and here on X.
However, the falsely shared clip was not filmed in Pakistan.
Bangladesh incident
A reverse image search of the video’s keyframes on Google found a Bengali-language news article by bdnews24, a Bangladeshi online newspaper (archived link).
The report was about an altercation on September 18 at a toll plaza on the Dhaka Elevated Expressway.
It included an image from the video under the headline “Scuffle with toll plaza employees on expressway, here is what authorities say”.
According to the report, a worker at the Kuril Toll Plaza stopped a yellow pickup truck after it breached safety regulations because it was carrying too many passengers.
AFP contacted Hasib Hasan Khan, the operations and maintenance manager at First Dhaka Elevated Expressway Company Limited, who confirmed that the footage shared online shows the incident.
He said there was a “misunderstanding” between the toll plaza staff and the people on the truck — who he said were mourners travelling to a funeral.
“These were all relatives of a deceased man and they were going to bury the dead body. The freezer with the dead body had already passed on the expressway,” he said. “They lost their patience so this incident happened. Nothing was damaged, nobody was injured. We have not made a complaint against anyone. It was a misunderstanding.”
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false post (left) and the CCTV footage (right):
The same toll booth can be seen on Google Street View (archived link).
AFP has debunked other false claims related to protests by PTI supporters here and here.
