BANGLADESH: The video showcasing bodybuilder kicking an award has gone viral on the internet. The BABF National Bodybuilding Championships 2022, which took place on December 23, have drawn worldwide attention, but not for the right reason.
A video from the tournament is circulating on various social media platforms, in which it can be seen that a bodybuilder is receiving a prize and later angrily tossing it in the air and kicking the prize twice as he walks out of the arena.
In the viral video, we can also see that he was trying to speak after receiving the award, but a man instructed him to stand to the side, which prompted him to leave the stage and kick the award.
Netizens allege that the bodybuilder belongs to the Dalit community, due to which he was made to stand on one side of the stage. Many Indian netizens have widely shared the 27-second-long video clip, with captions giving the caste angle.
This video was posted with a similar assertion by Anamika Gautam, who claims to be a member of the Bahujan Samaj Party. Her post racked up over 9,66,000 views.
Another Twitter user wrote, “Humiliation against the lower caste is everywhere at every platform, but what this young man did was marvelous, and we all should throw this upper caste like this.”
Our fact-checking team took a keen interest in this viral video and dug up the actual truth. We found out that the bodybuilder in the video, who is identified as Jahid Hasan Shuvo, was not a target of the caste system, but he was startled to be adjudged second as he was confident he would win first place.
A reverse search using keyframes from the viral video led us to the longer version of the video, which was uploaded to a YouTube channel named “Fit Tanvir” with the description that the video is from the Mr. Bangladesh 2022 competition.
But when we dug deeper, we found an article in Ajtak with visuals of the video. The article says that the video clip is from the 2022 Bodybuilding Championship in Bangladesh. The article also mentioned that he finished second in the competition and received a silver medal and a blender as rewards.
The article further reads that Shuvo was disappointed after receiving these prizes, as he was expecting to win the show. He attempted to speak on stage but was prevented from doing so, after which he left the stage and kicked his award.
While speaking to the media outlets, Shuvo said that the organisers planned the competition but did not allow players to view their results. He also alleged that the match was fixed, as reported by Bangla Ajtak.
Furthermore, Shuvo claimed that after placing second, he requested the microphone to address the crowd, but the secretary of the Federation pushed him away, saying that he had “no choice but to kick against corruption.”
As a result, on December 25, 2022, the Bangladesh Bodybuilding Federation, in compliance with the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness, imposed a lifetime ban on him. The bodybuilder criticised the action on social media, calling the federation “thieves.”
Later, on December 25, he apologised for his behaviour when speaking to the Bangladeshi sports station ‘Sports 24.’
The widely shared video gained immense traction on social platforms for showcasing the casteist angle of a bodybuilder from India who won the award but is ill-treated because he belongs to the Dalit community.
Thus, it is clear that the bodybuilder was not from India, and there was no caste angle in the story; rather, it was from Bangladesh, and the bodybuilder was disheartened for not winning the show as he was expecting and also because he was not given a chance to speak on stage.
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