Fact Check: Viral Video of Child Selling Balloons Misleadingly Claimed to Be from India, Actually from Bangladesh

Social media has become a major way for videos to go viral, reaching thousands of people in just minutes. Short clips are shared through messaging apps, reposted on different platforms, and often come with captions that add explanations or claims sometimes without checking if they are true. This fast sharing makes videos get a lot of attention quickly, influencing people’s views even before the video’s accuracy or origin is confirmed.

Amid this, a video is circulating online showing a young boy standing with a bunch of balloons, seemingly selling them. At one point, a young man points at the balloons and bursts all of them.

This video became more viral on the internet, while sharing this video a x user wrote, ಬಳಲಿದ ಕೈಗಳನ್ನು ಕೈ ಹಿಡಿದು ಬಲಪಡಿಸಬೇಕೇ ಹೊರತು.. ನಮ್ಮ ಬಲವನ್ನು ಅಸಹಾಯಕರ ಮೇಲೆ ತೋರಿಸಬಾರದು..! this post also share with a hashtag #NewIndia

When we translate it to english it reads, We must hold the trembling hands and strengthen them, not.. We must not show our strength on the helpless..!

A screenshot is provided below.

Fact check:

The claim linking the video to India is misleading. The footage is actually from Bangladesh, and the child in the video was given money and encouraged to go to school after the incident.

To verify the claim, we searched the internet using relevant keywords but did not find any reports published by prominent media outlets. If such an incident had occurred in India, it would likely have been widely reported by major news organizations or shared widely on prominent Indian social media platforms.

We also took a screenshot of the viral video and performed a reverse image search. Through this search, we found a YouTube Shorts video. On January 21, 2026, a YouTuber named Arif Vai 01 uploaded a video on his channel.

While uploading, Arif wrote in Bengali: “বেলুনওয়ালা বাচ্চাটার সাথে একি হলো দেখুন”.

Translated to English, it reads: “Look at the kid with the balloon.”

We found that this video is similar to the viral video, which is why we compared both. During the comparison, we observed that both videos are from the same incident, but this one was recorded from a different camera angle.

When we checked the description on the YouTuber’s channel, he mentioned: "Discover the best street food, viral dishes, live cooking, and hidden food spots across Bangladesh. Real flavors, real stories, real street food! Subscribe for daily tasty adventures."

We also found that this version of the video is slightly longer than the viral clip. In the final part, the man is seen asking the boy his age and then advising him to go to school and spend time playing at home instead of selling balloons. He also pays the boy for all the balloons.

We came across several other videos of the same incident recorded from different angles. These videos can be found here, here & here.

From these additional angles, it is clear that after bursting the balloons, the man speaks to the boy, asks his age, pays him for the balloons, and encourages him to go to school and play rather than work.

We found that all the accounts sharing these videos are based in Bangladesh and are posting local content from Bangladesh.

We also found Mohammed Zubair a senior factchecker react to a claim post and post a larger version of the video. In the post Zubair mentioned, The video is from Bangladesh. Not India. In the video, The man asks the boy his age and then pays him for all the balloons and asks him to go to school/ go home and play instead of selling balloons. At the end of the video you see him give 1000 Taka.

Hence, we found that the claim is likely Misleading. We could not identify the exact location, nor confirm whether the video is real or scripted. However, based on our investigation and observation of the posts sharing the video, it is clear that the incident is not from India and is likely from Bangladesh.