Videos and photographs that social media users have presented as evidence about the two Bangladeshis executed in Saudi Arabia this month are old, unrelated or manipulated, two independent fact-checks have found, while both families wait for official answers and the return of the bodies.

The claims began circulating within days of the 14 October executions and have travelled far beyond Bangladesh. A single post carrying one clip drew 26.8 million views, according to a fact-check published by iVerify Pakistan on 21 October. Other versions of the same material were shared by accounts in several countries, often with confident descriptions of an offence and a marriage that the Saudi authorities have never confirmed.

Saudi Arabia's interior ministry said Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Siti Akhtar, a man and a woman from Bangladesh, were convicted of an "immoral act" inside a mosque in Makkah and put to death in the Makkah region on 14 October. It said the sentence was imposed under ta'zir, a discretionary form of punishment in Islamic law, and was upheld before a royal order was issued. The statement did not describe the act, name the mosque or say how the two were killed.

Public information about the case remains thin. Nazrul, 25, went to Saudi Arabia in November 2022, was arrested about six months later and spent more than three years in prison, his family told The Business Standard. Bangladesh says it was not told before the executions took place and has asked Saudi Arabia for the court verdict; the Saudi embassy in Dhaka has not commented publicly on the details.

The fact-checks examined the most widely shared visuals one by one. A clip of a woman kissing the Hajar al-Aswad, the Black Stone, inside the Grand Mosque was posted from 18 October with captions saying it showed the executed woman. iVerify traced the same footage to an Instagram post on 27 February 2026 and to a Turkish outlet a day later, so it could not have come from this case.

A video of a crying girl throwing soil onto a grave, described as the couple's daughter, was traced to a Facebook post in May 2026. A video of a public execution in Makkah, shared with captions saying it showed the two Bangladeshis, matches a clip published by Dawn in January 2015 and shows the execution of Laila bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, a Myanmar woman, in an unrelated case.

A six-image collage mixed real and false material. One photograph of a man beside a coffin came from a 2019 Jagonews24 report on migrant workers whose bodies were repatriated. The SynthID detector indicated that one portrait in the collage had been generated with OpenAI's tools and another image had been edited with Google AI, iVerify reported.

India Today's fact-check team reached the same conclusion about the execution footage on 19 October, tracing it to January 2015. It noted that Saudi Arabia carried out more than 350 executions in 2025, according to Amnesty International, and that an Associated Press count put this year's toll above 170. Neither the exact offence nor the method of execution in this case has been officially described.

The false claims have also reached the families. Posts described the two as newly-weds and the girl as their child. Nazrul's father, Abdul Bachir, told Jago News that his son was not married and that the family did not know the woman. "That woman was not Nazrul's wife. We do not even know her," he said, adding that the claim about the bodies being brought home was also untrue.

The human cost behind the rumour is documented. The Business Standard reported that Nazrul was the eldest of four siblings and the family's only earner, and that he had spoken to his mother by phone on 11 October, three days before the execution. His aunt, Abeda Begum, who helped raise him, died of a heart attack after hearing the news. His mother, Rahima Begum, asked the government to bring his body back.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shama Obaed Islam told reporters in Dhaka that the government had asked for the verdict and would assess the case once the documents arrived. She urged the public to be patient and not to draw conclusions from Facebook posts or from misinformation. The Brahmanbaria district administration has said it will help return Nazrul's body.

Several questions remain open. The Saudi government has not released the court record, explained what evidence the court considered, or said whether either defendant had a lawyer. The families say they were not told in advance. It is not publicly known when the bodies will be repatriated, and neither government has released images or footage from the executions.

For readers, the practical test is the one the fact-checkers used: no Bangladeshi or Saudi outlet has published verified footage from the executions, and the interior ministry has released no images. Anything presented as such should be treated as unconfirmed until the court papers arrive.