Prasanta Dhali, one of the most popular social media influencers and YouTubers in West Bengal, became a victim of a cyberattack after raising his voice for Bharat and Hindus. A Bangladeshi hacker group called OLD MaxTan has claimed responsibility for this cyber attack.

Through sources, the Facebook conversation of the Bangladeshi hacker group came into this writer’s hands. Shortly after the cyber attack on Prasanta Dhali’s Facebook page and YouTube channel, the alleged Bangladeshi hacker group claimed responsibility for the attack on their Facebook page and urged other members of the group to carry out more cyber attacks.

The incident started with some videos on Prasanta Dhali’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. This popular social media influencer and YouTuber from West Bengal raised a strong voice about the recent Hindu persecution in Bangladesh. At the same time, he is always strongly vocal about various phenomena of pseudo-secularism in Bharat and the rights of Hindu communities all over the world. The Islamist hacker group in Bangladesh became angry with this.

Recently, Prasanta Dhali uploaded a video protesting the attack on 14 Hindu temples in one night in Thakurgaon district of Bangladesh. The video went viral in no time. From the next day, the Facebook authorities started banning one video after another from Prasanta Dhali’s Facebook page due to repeated cyber attacks. The reason: some third party was claiming ‘copyright’ on Prasanta Dhali’s videos. 

Then the real information came out through the internal investigation of HinduPost. Attacking from Bangladesh, this Islamist hacker group is downloading Prasanta Dhali’s videos and uploading them to some other page. Then they are claiming copyright on Prasanta Dhali’s original page for one video after another. As a result, Prasanta Dhali’s videos got banned one after another. At one point, Facebook authorities disabled Prasanta Dhali’s Facebook ID.

On the other hand, the attacking Bangladeshi Islamist hacker group OLD MaxTan has been traced. After the cyber attack on February 7, the group uploaded a post on its Facebook page with a picture of Prasanta Dhali, which said, “This man named Prasanta Dhali from Kolkata makes one after another anti-Bangladesh video and makes flippant comments about religion. Already 5 contents of his page have been removed. The page will be disabled very soon. The removed content links are given in the comment box.”

Also, this Islamist hacker group uploaded links to removed videos of Prasanta Dhali in the comment section of their Facebook post, each video of which has already been deleted from Prasanta Dhali’s Facebook page by the Facebook authorities on the pretext of false copyright claims. But in reality, Prasanta Dhali was only vocal about the ongoing persecution of the Hindu community in Bangladesh. As a result, it is apparent that Prasanta Dhali has been the victim of a cyber attack by this Islamist hacker group mainly for raising his voice for the Hindu community of Bangladesh.

This incident again shows the inherent anti-Hindu bias of American big tech platforms like Facebook, which crack down on Hindu accounts at the first opportunity – it is difficult to imagine that the FB moderation team could not figure out how Prasanta was being targeted. Why didn’t they at least give him a chance to present his side before banning him?

This is not the first time. Earlier too, Prasanta Dhali’s Facebook account was subjected to a cyber attack and got hacked. Despite seeking help from various places, he did not get any solution. As a result, he is anxious because of such repeated incidents. Netizens feel that if ordinary Bharatiyas do not protest against such incidents now and stand by the victims, then in the future there will be no one to raise their voice for the common Hindus of Bharat. Such cases also point to the urgent need for Bharat and Hindus to have their own social media and internet platforms, to avoid becoming a digital colony of the West.