Collage of an old and recreated photo does not show Bangladeshi freedom fighters.
Claim
Four Bangladeshi freedom fighters recreate their 1971 photograph in the same Willy’s Jeep
Rating
Explanation
A collage of an old and recreated photo of a group of 4 women sitting in a car with guns in their hands is shared widely with the claim that they are Bangladeshi freedom fighters and have recreated their 1971 photograph in the same Willy’s Jeep. Some of the posts with such a claim can be seen here and here.
What is the truth?
When reverse-searching the old photo in black and white we found the image posted on the ‘yesterdaytoday’ website under the title “50 Amazing Vintage Photos From the 1960s Volume 6”. The photo is captioned “Bangladeshi women posing with guns in a village, 1965”.
Another result of the reverse search shows the image posted by a Facebook page ‘Bangladesh Old Photo Archive’ in July 2013 with the caption “Women are posing with a gun in a village trip. Bangladesh (1965)”. The photo is credited to Rehan Ahmed. The said person is also tagged in the Facebook post with a few others.
When searching the profile of Rehan Ahmed we found him posting the same image in August 2020. The comment section of this Facebook post gave us a few other details.
To a comment that asked to identify the people in the photo, Rehan Ahmed replied that the picture of his grandmother and others was taken by his grandfather in 1961. And the same was recreated in 2017. The collage of an old photo and the recreated one is found commented on by another Facebook user in the same post.
NewsBangla24 Youtube channel uploaded a video related to the viral image in March 2021. The video titled “the viral picture of four women is not of the liberation war. Story of a Viral Photo” is an interview with Rifat Ahmed, daughter-in-law of Rokeya Ahmed, one of the women in the photo.
The names of the women are identified as Ayesha Ahmed (the one holding the steering wheel), Rokeya Ahmed (the other one in the front), Rashida Ahmed and Shahanara Ahmed from the Banedi family in Dhaka.
The old photo was taken by Rifat Ahmed’s father-in-law, Alauddin Ahmed, a wealthy businessman and a handsome photographer. After a hunting session in Khulna around 1961-62 he made his wife and sisters sit in a car and pose with a gun. And in 2017, husband Amin Uddin Ahmed took pictures of those four people again in the same car during their son Rinan Ahmed’s wedding. The World War II Willys model car is still in the collection of Amin Uddin Ahmed’s family, reads the description part of the NewsBangla24 YouTube video. It also mentions that two of them in the photo are not alive as of this writing.
Conclusion
It is found that the collage of a photo taken in the 1960s recreated in 2017 is shared to falsely claim that the Bangladeshi freedom fighters have recreated their old photo taken in 1971.
