West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, on May 19, said the process of identifying and deleting alleged illegal immigrants from voter lists had already been completed and that ‘deportation’ would begin next.
He repeated and sharpened the remarks on May 26, urging faster deportation of alleged illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and backing the ‘detect, delete, and deport’ policy.
In the above context, a video is being widely shared on social media. The video shows a massive crowd walking along a road and has gone viral on social media.
The video is shared with a caption claiming ‘lakhs of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants’ fleeing West Bengal after CM Suvendu Adhikari warned infiltrators to leave or face action.
A social media user shared the video with a caption that reads, “Bengal is getting clean. It was a dream to see this. This is the power of unity of Hindus and the power of voting BJP.”
SouthCheck found that the claim is false. The viral video is from January 2026 and is of the Biswa Ijtema congregation.
On a Google reverse image search, we found that the same video was shared by an Instagram page on January 6, with the text embedded that reads, ‘Hooghly Ijtema’.
Since the video predates the formation of the BJP government in West Bengal, which took office in May 2026, we can ascertain that the viral video is old.
Another Instagram page also shared the same video with a caption that reads, “Hooghly Ijtema 2026 Draws Massive Crowd in West Bengal.”
We further geo-located and found that the same stall was available on the road as seen in the video. Also, we can see that the poster suggesting the direction of Ijtema is also visible. All of this suggests that the viral video is of the Ijtema.
Hence, we can ascertain that the viral video is of the Ijtema.
Using this information, we searched with relevant keywords and found that the incident was also reported by The Telegraph on January 3. According to the report, the Biswa Ijtema was held from January 2 to 5 in the Puinan area of Hooghly district. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim devotees from within India and abroad participated in the event.
What is happening in Bengal?
While there have been reports of hundreds of suspected undocumented Bangladeshi nationals gathering at border checkpoints in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district following the BJP government's ‘detect, delete and deport’ policy, the viral video is unrelated to these developments. Those leaving the state have been seen in queues at official border crossings, not in the kind of massive road procession shown in the viral clip.
However, we can ascertain that the viral claim is false.