Ahead of Bangladesh’s election, a surge of disinformation, much from India, is threatening voter choice with AI-generated content and false claims of sectarian violence.
DHAKA: Voters in Bangladesh will elect a new government on February 12, but analysts warn their choice is threatened by a coordinated surge of disinformation.
Much of this false content originates from neighbouring India, according to experts.
The Muslim-majority nation of around 170 million people is preparing for its first election since a 2024 student-led uprising toppled Sheikh Hasina.
Hasina fled to India, where she has been hosted by the Hindu-nationalist government.
Interim leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus said in January there had been a “flood of misinformation surrounding the elections”.
“It is coming from both foreign media and local sources,” he said.
Much of the disinformation centres on false claims of attacks against Bangladesh’s minorities.
Around 10% of Bangladesh’s population is non-Muslim, with most being Hindu.
This has seen mass online posting of claims that Hindus are under attack, using the hashtag “Hindu genocide”.
According to police figures released in January, out of 645 incidents involving minority group members in 2025, only 12% were classified as having a sectarian motive.
The US-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate tracked more than 700,000 posts from over 170,000 accounts on X making claims of a “Hindu genocide” between August 2024 and January 2026.
“We have tracked coordinated Indian disinformation online, falsely alleging large-scale violence against Hindus in Bangladesh,” said Raqib Naik, head of the think tank.
“More than 90% of this content originated from India, with the remainder linked to associated Hindu nationalist networks in the UK, US, and Canada,” he told AFP.
Examples debunked by AFP Fact Check include an AI-created video of a woman who had lost her arm appealing not to vote for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
In another computer-generated video, a Hindu woman alleges that people who follow the same religion have been told to vote for Jamaat-e-Islami or face exile to India.
Of the hundreds of AI-generated videos documented by AFP Fact Check teams on social media platforms, few are marked with an AI disclaimer.
The surge has also come after years of repression under Hasina, when opposition was crushed and outspoken voices silenced.
“We are noticing a huge amount of fake information compared to other times,” said Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury, head of the Dhaka-based research organisation Digitally Right.
He said free AI tools made creating sophisticated fakes easier.
In another AI-generated video, Bangladeshis appear to praise Hasina, who is now a fugitive sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity.
In India, social media outrage by Hindu fundamentalists about the lone Bangladeshi cricket player in India’s domestic IPL league resulted in his club cancelling his contract.
The furore escalated to Bangladesh’s national team pulling out of this month’s T20 World Cup in India.
While analysts say much of the disinformation originates from India, there is no evidence the large-scale media posts were organised by the government.
New Delhi’s foreign ministry says it has recorded a “disturbing pattern of recurring attacks on minorities” by “extremists in Bangladesh”.
It also emphasises it has “consistently reiterated our position in favour of free, fair, inclusive and credible elections”.
Bangladesh Election Commission spokesman Md. Ruhul Amin Mallik said they were working with Meta and set up a unit to monitor social media posts.
“If our team detects any content as harmful and misleading, we instantly announce it as fake information,” Mallik said.
Election expert Jasmine Tuli, a former election commission official, said AI-generated images carried an extra risk for Bangladesh.
More than 80% of urban households have at least one smartphone, and nearly 70% of rural areas, according to government statistics.
Many people are still relatively new to the technology.
“It is a big threat for a country like Bangladesh, since people don’t have much awareness to check the information,” Tuli said.
“Due to AI-generated fake visuals, voters get misguided in their decision.”
