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Every Saudi death sentence is followed closely in Sri Lanka, where many families live on Gulf wages and where the case of Sivarasa Anojan had only just made headlines. So when Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Interior announced on October 14, 2026 that it had executed two Bangladeshi nationals, Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Siti Akhtar, in the Makkah region for an “indecent act” inside a mosque (Gulf News), and Bangladesh said it had not been told in advance (The Daily Star), the news travelled fast.
Within days, posts in Bengali, English, Sinhala and Tamil were telling a very different story: newlyweds on an Umrah honeymoon, a forehead kiss filmed by a Pakistani man, a public beheading, a little daughter throwing soil on her parents’ graves, two coffins flown home and Saudi men dancing after the killing. We checked each claim, and every video and photo attached to it. Here are the posts that carried the story.
Social Media Posts:
The story began in Bengali. The earliest English version we found, posted at 9:36 a.m. Sri Lanka time on October 19, was a translation of a Bengali question-and-answer post shared less than two hours earlier. It said the “young couple” were “Husband and wife. Newlyweds” who had gone to Makkah for Umrah, that “the young man simply kissed the young woman on her forehead” on a mosque veranda, and that a Pakistani witness “immediately recorded a video on his phone” and showed it to a guard.
By that evening the story had been rewritten for a wider English-speaking audience. A post headed “TRENDING STORY: A HONEYMOON THAT ENDED IN TRAGEDY” said the couple were newlyweds who had travelled to Mecca for their honeymoon, that the alleged act was “a kiss on the forehead,” and that their bodies had arrived in Bangladesh “in two separate coffins.” It passed 4,200 shares. Another post the same evening, which added that the two “were both publicly beheaded,” passed 2,300 shares. Both used the same collage: a bowed man and woman with blurred faces, the Kaaba, and two coffins beside a van.
Reels and news-style pages carried it further. A reel repeating the “forehead kiss” caption, with the added claim that “the wife is allegedly pregnant,” passed 3,000 shares. On October 20, Record TV Africa ran “BREAKING: Saudi Arabia Executes Bangladeshi Newlyweds Over Forehead Kiss in Mecca Mosque,” illustrated with two portraits, two coffins with those photos pasted on them and a man weeping over a coffin. The page JESUS SAVES TV wrote that “a man of Pakistani nationality filmed the couple kissing in the courtyard of a mosque” before they were beheaded.
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From October 20, reels presented a video of a little girl at a graveside as “the daughter of the Bangladeshi couple executed in Saudi Arabia” placing soil “on the graves of both her parents.” Another reel, by the page Unfolded history, said Nazrul had kissed the belly of his “pregnant wife.”
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On X, accounts shared the 2015 beheading clip, a photo of a couple at the Kaaba, the girl at the graves and a video of a couple kissing in Makkah, each presented as the executed pair. The beheading clip and the girl’s video drew millions of views there, a Pakistani fact check found (here).
The same story also spread in Sinhala and Tamil from October 19, with the “honeymoon” and “Pakistani” lines, the coffins, a crying girl and the two portraits. Our Tamil team checked those posts (here and here).
A newer video claim surfaced in Tamil on October 21. A Facebook reel said, “Saudi Arabian animals are dancing after beheading the young Bangladeshi couple with a sword,” over footage of men in Gulf dress dancing above a clip of two coffins.
Earlier, on October 17, Sinhala and Tamil pages had already linked the executions to a Sri Lankan case, posting them as “the latest verdict related to Anojan” and claiming two Muslims had been executed for insulting the Prophet on social media. One Tamil post passed 390,000 views.
Claim examined: A newly married Bangladeshi couple on an Umrah honeymoon were beheaded in Makkah on October 14, 2026, over a forehead kiss filmed by a Pakistani man, and the viral videos and photos show the execution, the couple, their orphaned daughter, their coffins arriving in Bangladesh and Saudi men dancing after the beheading.
Fact Check:
Saudi Arabia announced an execution for an unspecified “indecent act”
The Ministry of Interior statement, carried by the Saudi Press Agency on October 14, said Bangladeshi nationals Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Siti Akhtar were arrested, charged after an investigation, and referred to a court. The court sentenced both to death under ta’zir, a punishment left to the judge’s discretion rather than one fixed in Islamic scripture, for “indecent acts” that violated the sanctity of a mosque in Makkah. The ruling was upheld, and the sentence was carried out the same day in the Makkah region under a royal order (Gulf News, The Daily Star).
That is the entire official account. It does not name the mosque, give the date of the alleged act, describe the act, or say how the sentence was carried out. Every other detail in the viral posts came from somewhere else.
The two were migrant cleaners jailed since 2023, not honeymoon pilgrims
A confidential memo sent by the Bangladesh Consulate General in Jeddah on October 18, obtained by The Daily Star, shows that both names were already on a Saudi prisoner list the consulate received on September 30. Nazrul was detained on August 1, 2023, under Saudi Arabia’s cybercrime law and held at the Jeddah Correctional Facility. The woman, listed as “Suety Akhter,” was detained the next day on an adultery allegation and held at the Jeddah Women’s Prison. Both worked as cleaners for a company called Al Majal.
Their families’ accounts broadly fit that timeline. Nazrul’s parents in Brahmanbaria told The Daily Star that he left for a cleaning job in Saudi Arabia on November 10, 2022, and was arrested about six months later. Sweety Akhtar’s father, from Mirzapur in Tangail, said he had borrowed Tk 1.5 lakh to send her to Saudi Arabia about four years ago, and that she sent money home for five months before calling to say she had been jailed (The Daily Star). Two people who had spent more than three years in Saudi custody could not have been a couple on a honeymoon trip.
They were not married to each other, and the girl at the graves is not their daughter
Nazrul’s father, Abdul Basir, told Jagonews24, “That woman was not Nazrul’s wife.” His mother, Rahima Begum, told The Business Standard that he was unmarried and had never mentioned Sweety: “If he had married her, we would certainly have known.” An unnamed relative told BBC Bangla that Nazrul had admitted to an affair with the woman (The Week), but that is a long way from a marriage or an Umrah honeymoon.
Sweety’s mother told The Daily Star that her daughter was divorced and had a young daughter, who had been raised by the family since Sweety left for Saudi Arabia. Her father told BBC she had married about five years ago and divorced after two years (BBC Tamil). That child was not Nazrul’s, and, as shown below, the video of the girl at the graves was online months before the execution. A review by Dhaka Tribune also found no evidence for marriage or Umrah claims. An official at the Bangladesh mission in Jeddah told The Daily Star that both were executed over alleged adultery.
No official or family source says the offence was a kiss, or that a Pakistani man filmed it
Neither the Saudi statement, the consulate memo, Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry nor either family has said the “indecent act” was a kiss. The forehead kiss and the “Pakistani who filmed it” spread from October 19 through X posts with Turkish and Hindi captions and Bengali and English Facebook posts, and reached Sinhala pages the same evening. None of them cited a document, an official or a witness.
The closest real detail is that Nazrul’s relatives told Prothom Alo he had a dispute with a Pakistani co-worker and accused that man of conspiring against him (The Week). That is a family’s allegation about a workplace quarrel, not an account of anything that happened inside a mosque. The ministry itself has never explained what the “indecent act” was.
The “execution video” was filmed in Makkah in January 2015
The clip shared as the “execution video,” showing a woman in a black abaya being beheaded on a street, records the public execution in Makkah in January 2015 of Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, a woman from Myanmar convicted of killing her seven-year-old stepdaughter. CNN and Dawn reported on the video at the time. Our Tamil team and Fact Crescendo India traced the same footage.
The same scene also circulated on X as “two Bangladeshis beheaded yesterday.” The Saudi statement on the two Bangladeshis does not say how the sentence was carried out.
The Kaaba “kiss” videos are older and show other people
A video of a man and a woman at the Black Stone (Hajar al-Aswad) of the Kaaba was shared on X as the “indecent act” itself. The first such post, on October 18, drew 26.8 million views, iVerify found. The Holy Mosques account, which posts updates from the mosques in Makkah and Madinah, said the video was false and was not evidence of the execution, Khaleej Times reported. iVerify Pakistan found the same clip on Instagram dated February 27, 2026, almost eight months before the execution.
Another video, of a couple kissing in Makkah, was posted on August 7, 2026, by vlogger Khadija Belgoum with her husband, Billy Rahman. She said it showed her revealing her pregnancy to him and later rejected the false link in her Instagram Stories, BOOM found.
The faces are AI-generated, and the couple outside the Haram is Egyptian
The two portraits of a bearded man and a woman in a black hijab, used in the Record TV Africa post and in Sinhala and Tamil posts, have no traceable source. iVerify Pakistan reported that the paired portrait carried a marker showing it was made with OpenAI tools, and that Google’s SynthID detector flagged the “arrested couple” image as made or edited with Google AI. Our Tamil team got the same SynthID result (here).
The real Nazrul Islam looks different. This is the photo of him published in the press:
Sweety Akhtar’s parents holding her photo:
Another photo, of a couple in front of Masjid al-Haram shared as the “executed newlyweds,” shows Egyptian influencer Gehad Elbana and her husband, Ramzy Mahmoud. The photos were posted in December 2024 after a shoot in front of the Kaaba, BOOM found, and India News Network reported that the shoot marked her pregnancy announcement.
The crying girl, the coffins and the funeral belong to other families
The video of a little girl weeping as she throws soil on a grave was posted on a Bangladeshi Facebook page on May 26, 2026, months before the execution, with the caption “Everyone cried seeing the daughter’s tears,” our Tamil team and iVerify Pakistan found.
The airport coffin videos shared as “the couple’s bodies arriving home” were posted on October 17 and 18 by a Bangladeshi user who regularly films arrivals at the airport. He later apologized, saying his captions were wrong (Facebook).
Another coffin video was on TikTok on October 8, six days before the execution. The funeral video shown as their burial is from the July 2026 funeral of two brothers from Lakshmipur who died in a road accident in Dammam (Prothom Alo, in Bengali). The photo of a man weeping beside a coffin in the viral collage first appeared in a Jagonews24 report on migrant workers’ repatriated bodies in June 2019, iVerify found. All of this is set out in detail in our Tamil article.
The “Saudis dancing after the beheading” reel is stitched from unrelated clips
We checked the Tamil reel frame by frame. It is a split screen. The lower half is the same airport coffin footage posted on October 17 and 18 by the Bangladeshi user who later apologized for his captions. The upper half shows a group of men in white thobes and red-and-white shemaghs performing a traditional group dance inside a decorated hall, one of them holding a sword or cane aloft. Nothing in it shows a public square, an execution, or any link to the two Bangladeshis.
Group dances like this, such as the Ardah and the Dahha, are a common sight at weddings and celebrations across the Gulf. We could not find the original upload of the dance clip, but its pairing with footage that has already been traced to someone else shows the reel was assembled to fit the story. The Saudi statement mentions no public ceremony, and the bodies had not reached Bangladesh when the reel was posted.
The bodies had not reached Bangladesh
As of October 20, the bodies had not arrived in Bangladesh. Airport welfare officials confirmed to Dhaka Tribune that nobody had arrived. Brahmanbaria’s Deputy Commissioner said Nazrul’s family had not yet applied to bring his body home (The Daily Star), and State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shama Obaed Islam said repatriation could be arranged once Saudi Arabia replied to Bangladesh’s letter (Prothom Alo). Both families are still asking the government to bring the bodies home.
This is not the Anojan case
The October 17 posts calling this “the latest verdict related to Anojan” mixed up two separate cases. As we explained, Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court overturned the death sentence given to Sri Lankan worker Sivarasa Anojan over a social media post and sent his case for retrial.
The two Bangladeshis were executed over an “indecent act” in a mosque. Nazrul’s detention was recorded under the cybercrime law, but neither the Saudi statement nor the consulate’s records link either execution to blasphemy or to a post about the Prophet.
What is true, and what Bangladesh is still asking
The executions did happen, and Bangladesh was not told in advance. The Jeddah consulate said it was not notified beforehand and sent a note verbale to the Saudi Foreign Ministry (The Daily Star). The prisoner list Saudi Arabia had shared did not mention a death sentence for either person (The Daily Star).
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humaiun Kobir called it “disappointing” and said, “there was a gap in information-sharing” (Prothom Alo). Md Nazrul Islam, Secretary (East and West) at the Foreign Ministry, met Saudi Ambassador Abdullah Zafer bin Abiyah in Dhaka on October 18, and Dhaka sought detailed information on the executions and said it was still awaiting a copy of the verdict (Prothom Alo). On October 22, the Human Rights Support Society called for an impartial investigation into the consular failure (The Daily Star).
Two migrant workers were executed under a discretionary punishment, for an offence the government has not described, after about three years in custody and without their consulate or families being told. What was proved when they were sentenced and whether they had lawyers are still not known.
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Conclusion:
Our fact check found the viral story false. Saudi Arabia did execute two Bangladeshi nationals, Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Sweety (Siti) Akhtar, on October 14, 2026, over an unspecified “indecent act” in a Makkah mosque. But they were cleaners held in Saudi custody since August 2023 and were not married to each other, and no official or family source describes a kiss, a honeymoon, or a Pakistani informer. The only Pakistani in the record is a co-worker Nazrul’s relatives accused of conspiring against him.
The execution video is from 2015, the Kaaba clips are older and show other people, the faces are AI-generated, and the girl, coffins and funeral belong to other families. The “dancing Saudis” reel is stitched from unrelated footage, and the bodies had not reached Bangladesh on the dates the posts claimed. The documented facts, reported by The Daily Star, Prothom Alo and the families themselves, are serious enough: no notice to Bangladesh, unanswered questions about the trial, and two families still waiting for answers.
