Amongst all places of Bharat, protest on the Waqf Amendment Act broke out first in Park Circus, Kolkata on April 4 immediately after Rajya Sabha passed the bill reflecting the level of preparedness of West Bengal minority groups to kick start a so-called ‘street protest’.
On April 6, West Bengal witnessed a massive celebration of Ram Navami when Hindus organised grand processions worshipping Prabhu Shri Ram on the streets of Kolkata and all districts with Murshidabad being no exception. The spectacular State-wide celebration of Ram Navami left no scope to question the Hindutva-consciousness of the Hindus of Bengal.
Islamists Target Govt & Public
Just after the Presidential assent to the amended Waqf Act on April 8, Muslims hit the streets in Jangipur Murshidabad reminding people of anti-CAA protests that began in the same Murshidabad district in December 2019 the very next day after CAA 2019 was passed in Rajya Sabha. This time too, they started attacking and destroying Government and public properties in the name of anti-Waqf Act protest, setting police cars and big vehicles on fire reflecting on their over-preparedness for arson while the State Police was nowhere to be seen.
While West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee declared in her signature style that the amended Waqf Act won’t be implemented in West Bengal, Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari took to X requesting the West Bengal Chief Secretary and DM Murshidabad to seek Governor’s and MHA’s assistance for the deployment of Central Forces. His suggestion was perhaps not heeded by the West Bengal Government and another protest rally was declared to come up in Kolkata on April 10 by Jamiat-e-Ulema led by the State’s Library Minister Siddiqulla Choudhury against the new Waqf Act. Kolkata was flooded with people, wearing a single particular attire with no variation, who forced a bus driver to remove the saffron flag that was hoisted on the day of Ramnavami. The optics of the bus-driver being alone within the mob of rabid saffron-haters was disturbing. The same people then stepped onto the bus’ rooftop with Islamic flags in hands in a mood of ghoulish exultation.
Bengal Govt Nonchalant
From April 10, ruckus and mayhem went gradually on an ascending order, displaying apparent indifference of the State machinery about containing violence. After Tahawwur Hussain Rana was extradited back to Bharat at around 6.30 pm on April 10, Jalangi, Jangipur, Suti, Samserganj areas of Murshidabad started facing intense mob attacks. The attacks gained greater momentum from April 11 when the stone pelters started attacking the BDO office at Jalangi, torched several vehicles and public properties in Jangipur and finally attacked the Eastern Railways at Dhuliyan.
Targeting Trains
The crowd reportedly started gathering near Dhulianganga station after 1 pm on April 11 and started stone-pelting at the trains resulting in stoppage of train movements. Eastern Railway CPRO Diptimoy Dutta informed the press that train services in Azimganj – New Farakka section of the Eastern Railways got affected as around 5,000 people started squatting on the railway track between Dhulianganga and Nimtita stations obstructing the movement of Kamakhya – Puri Express at around 2.46 pm on April 11. The vandals damaged the level crossing Gate no. 43 and also the electrical lifting barrier, sliding boom, panel and relay room jeopardising signal transmission at that LC gate. Obstruction between Dhulianganga and Nimtita was withdrawn at around 8:30 pm after RPF, GRP, BSF & local police arrived at that site to negotiate with the agitators, while the track was declared fit at 9.50 pm to resume train services.
In spite of such havoc being caused by the marauders, West Bengal administration didn’t call for Central Security Forces’ assistance throughout the day of April 11 & effectively allowed free hand to the vandals. West Bengal BJP President Sukanta Majumdar posted a video statement in the early evening on April 11 that Hindu mandirs in different parts across Bengal were being vandalised, houses of Hindus being attacked, 5 trains got stuck and 10-12 policemen sustained injuries. He alleged that Mamata Banerjee was deliberately handing West Bengal over to ‘jihadis’. West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose too had posted a video stating, “The Chief Secretary has assured that the Government is taking very stern action against the miscreants and will not allow disturbances to escalate…”
It was under such pressure that Murshidabad district administration finally called for BSF’s help late in the evening to remove agitators from the railway tracks, which was communicated to the press by the BSF DIG PRO of the South Bengal Frontier Nilotpal Kumar Pandey. Though the State Administration called for BSF-help, it didn’t want to inform the people about it.
Facilitating Vandalism
From April 12 midnight, the State Police started reporting to the press that the situation in Suti and Samserganj was under control, mob dispersed and the National Highway was normal. The police also started warning people against rumours apparently in order to prevent them from posting anything in the social media. West Bengal Police, enthusiastically patting its own back, continued to claim throughout the night and even in the morning on April 12 that the situation turned normal in Suti and Samserganj, while the situation deteriorated the most on April 12 itself. However, a local vendor informed the press that the mob had vandalised and torched bikes, shops throughout the night and plundered the inventory of a series of shops. The locals, trembling in fear the whole night, disclosed that the Bengal Police was clueless of what was happening on the ground because the policemen themselves fled away when a police station got attacked. This implied that the West Bengal Police misled the people by claiming normalcy perhaps in order to facilitate unhindered vandalism.
On April 12 noon, Suvendu Adhikari appealed in writing to the Railway Minister, GOI for handing the investigation of the railway-vandalism at Murshidabad over to the National Investigative Agency (NIA) as the incidents posed grave threat to public safety and national security. Adhikari’s comprehension appeared no wrong as the vandals disabled the signalling system exactly at that part of the railways which effectively cut-off the railway-link between North & South Bengal. Dhuliyan was a strategic location for such an attack as Dhuliyan was also the second narrowest part of West Bengal (after the Siliguri corridor chicken neck) capturing which could drag in the Bangladesh border just beside Pakur, Jharkhand.
At around 1.30 pm on the same day, Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar informed the press that houses were being looted and torched one after another while Hindu women were being heckled and mistreated in Sajirmore, Suti, Samserganj and New Farakka areas. He alleged that the State Police were sitting idle doing nothing. It was also being informed by local sources from Dhuliyan that massive vandalism was being perpetrated by communal forces in several wards of Dhulian Municipality such as ward number 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 19. People were terrorised and there was genuine fear about rampant murderous violence due to lack of enough security forces. Though BSF had been deployed, the locals said that the BSF jawans in Nimtita area had been kept stationed in Muralipukur High School and Dafahat Model School and not being duly used. The situation turned so grave on April 12 that at around 1.30 pm, DGP Rajiv Kumar met the press admitting that communal violence was going on in the State. The DGP stated that the GoWB would do its part to compensate for the loss of the victims but people and press need to co-operate with the police to contain violence. He further said that West Bengal Police was not an action-shy force against miscreants but all must stand united in the moment of crisis. DGP’s presser communicated that the situation was grave enough to compel even the West Bengal Police to admit a communal attack.
Grim Reality
People of Murshidabad faced the worst situation on April 12 after which they started leaving their houses to move out of Dhuliyan for refuge elsewhere in Maldah district. The videos of refugees came to the public domain two days later. On April 12, over 400 Hindus left their own houses at Dhuliyan, crossed river Ganga and reached Deonapur-Sovapur Gram Panchayat area of Baisnabnagar, Malda. Before the evening of April 12, three people were reportedly killed in Dhuliyan, Murshidabad including a father and son duo, Haragobindo Das and Chandan Das, both of whom were affiliated to CPM. BSF reported that they were attacked on duty with a petrol bomb on April 12 in Dhuliyan.
Unravelling the Truth
Even though the State’s advocate Arka Kumar Nag described the PIL filed by LoP Suvendu Adhikari as ‘political interest petition’, the fact remains that it was only after the deployment of CAPF that videos of people’s eviction from their own homes came to the public domain. People felt a sigh of relief only in presence of BSF camps in their periphery and demanded permanent posting of BSF & CAPF near them, exposing the total failure & inaction of the law and order machinery of the State.
On April 12, over 400 Hindus left their own houses at Dhuliyan, crossed river Ganga and reached Deonapur-Sovapur Gram Panchayat area of Baisnabnagar, Malda
A very large section of the rest of Bharat started blaming West Bengal Hindus themselves for their fate as they repeatedly voted for a dispensation like Mamata Banerjee’s. Such people are neither wrong nor correct. While the geographical & political discourse of West Bengal was similar to no other State’s of Bharat since Partition & Independence, not even of Jammu & Kashmir, the rest of Bharat seems completely clueless of the existing electoral malpractices of West Bengal in order to manipulate the election results.
Moreover, Dhuliyan being a part of Maldah Dakshin Parliamentary constituency which had gone to Congress in 2024 Lok Sabha having Isha Khan Chowdhury with 41.79 per cent vote share as MP, no statement came from the Congress till Rashid Alvi supported the vandalism on Hindus of Dhuliyan on April 14 at night saying “every action has a reaction… and the BJP is responsible for it.” While people put blame on TMC MP of Baharampur, Yousuf Pathan, nobody blamed Rahul Gandhi or Isha Khan Chowdhury of Congress or the TMC MLA of Samserganj, Amirul Islam. Blaming Yousuf Pathan appeared a deliberate diversion of public outrage from the real targets.
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