The real reason behind the communal violence in Beldanga, Murshidabad appears more and more mysterious with the passing time. While one of the Kartik Puja Pandals were attacked by the people of a specific community, ThePrint has reported ‘It all started with a light display on a puja pandal gate flashing objectionable messages. By around 8.30 pm Saturday, a video of the display, which was seen as offensive to a particular community, had spread like wildfire on social media platforms.’ ThePrint quoted some Vikram Das, a local of Beldanga. “…We did not realise what happened. The electrical wires were snapped immediately after the message on the light display came to people’s notice… In half an hour after the videos went viral, the unrest had spread and extended to adjacent areas,”… ‘According to him, a Muslim individual arranged the lighting, while the decorators were Hindu, but official sources have not confirmed this.’ Added the news portal.
Though no official confirmation but it had been claimed by a large number of Beldanga locals that the lighting décor of the Puja Pandal near Harimati School was done by some Muslim lighting artist named some Bashar. Wherever disgruntled Muslims had posted the video of the objectionable lighting display in the social media, people had raised the counter argument that such a display was prepared by a Muslim himself.
Locals felt surprised that just within half-an-hour after the video hit the social media, an apparently organized mayhem captured Beldanga. The speed of communal repercussion took them by surprise though Beldanga’s antecedents suggested there was nothing surprising in it.
While the 2019 amendment of “The Citizenship Act of India 1955” was passed in the Indian Parliament on December 13 in 2019, violent minority mob had attacked the Beldanga Railway Station the very next day i.e. December 14 to deactivate the signalling system, burn down a loco train & also the fire dousing vehicle brought in there by the fire brigade. They were all prepared within less than 24 hours with the required volumes of inflammables to arson such huge machines like a loco train and a fire brigade vehicle.
So it is obvious that Beldanga harbours dangerous people who are thoroughly prepared to create giant-scale anti-national mayhem as exemplified in December 2019 during the riotous anti-CAA protest. All these were not possible under proactive surveillance of the West Bengal State Police.
Beldanga is an area where the Hindus are concentrated in the central part of the place while the Muslims have settled in the periphery around them who, predominantly, are infiltrators from the neighbouring Bangladesh. Raninagar near Beldanga is reportedly an entry point of infiltrators & also a gold smuggling corridor. However, in the recent past, the BSF had been duly active to curb both infiltration & gold smuggling through Raninagar & other places along the West Bengal-Bangladesh border in Murshidabad. Attempts of gold smuggling had been repeatedly foiled by the BSF in Raninagar while an attempt of arms smuggling too had been foiled by the West Bengal State Police at New Farakka Station of Murshidabad in November 2024.
All these are supposed to affect the crime economy across the Murshidabad border. So it can’t be ruled out that the criminal ecosystem of Beldanga dependent on the trans-border crime economy are hatching conspiracies to create large scale communal mayhem to pressurize the Government of India not to impede, with the help of the security forces, their gold & arms smuggling projects & the infiltration activities through Murshidabad border. It is also possible that impatient border criminals turned desperate to orchestrate a riot so that they can give effects to their plans of human infiltration & smuggling activities in the riotous hullabaloo thus created. Only an NIA probe may confirm the real reason behind the Kartik Puja violence in Beldanga. BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari demanded an NIA probe though TMC didn’t want to pay heed to his comments.
From the antecedents of the West Bengal Police it appears unlikely that they would be able to bring the real culprits of Beldanga to justice. One policeman of the State was heard saying to the aggrieved people of the Muslim community, ‘have faith on the State police & you’ll get the desirable result INSHALLAH’. While even an ‘on duty’ policeman too posed with some religious bias, it appeared impossible for such State Police to extract the truth out of such incident.
The other intriguing factor of Beldanga violence is the selective prohibitory approach of both the Government of West Bengal (GoWB) and the Government of India(GOI) towards the reporting of the same. Assistant Editor of OpIndia.com Dibakar Dutta’s post on Beldanga violence was removed by X after receiving a direction from @GoI_MeitY to do the same.
Shocked to learn that @GoI_MeitY has directed Twitter to remove my tweet depicting the true nature of hate crime & religious violence in West Bengal's Beldanga.
In fact, I reported it when no other media had even dared to cover it.
My tweet is 100% correct and factual. pic.twitter.com/4ilqPVORuj
— Dibakar Dutta (দিবাকর দত্ত) (@dibakardutta_) November 18, 2024
On the other hand, another media named FOEJ media had posted in X the video containing the ‘objectionable light display’ on November 18 (which has the potential to incite a particular community) & @GoI_MeitY perhaps didn’t direct X to delete the same as yet.
https://twitter.com/FoejMedia/status/1858423316798951800?t=XzPLZUsb0NVNgfV_rot9zg&s=19
The LinkedIn profile of FOEJ media shows that it has 3 associate members namely Iqra Noor (Delhi University), Sidra Fatima & another member whose name is not mentioned in FOEJ media’s LinkedIn profile. Both Iqra & Sidra are young beginners looking forward to having better professional engagements in journalism. Therefore, it appears almost obvious that they are not the decision-makers to finalize FOEJ media’s post contents. So, the decision-maker(s) of FOEJ apparently remains under cover who perhaps has the liberty to post anything about Beldanga which OpIndia or many other media houses don’t have. This variation appears intriguing.
While the West Bengal mainstream media had to remain tight-lipped about the communal nature of Beldanga violence, certain X handles of West Bengal freely posted the same objectionable video containing the controversial lighting display. The YouTubers & most of the social media handles faced the red eyes of the West Bengal police who posted in their X handle “Please do not heed unverified facts and figures being circulated on social media to disrupt peace. Sternest possible legal action will be taken against law-breakers as also the rumour-mongers.” However, certain handles got the freedom to post the content of their choice related to the communal nature of Beldanga violence. This may remind people of the famous Orwellian quote. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
When a media with distinct pro-minority bias posts a content that has potential to incite the minority community itself, it perhaps indicates with better clarity that Beldanga violence has a larger conspiracy behind it. Mystery thereof needs to be solved. An NIA probe looks necessary.
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