Assault of sadhus latest BJP-TMC flashpoint in Bengal, 12 arrested

This “misunderstanding”, police said, prompted local residents to attack the three sadhus, vandalise their car, and also assault a driver and a cook accompanying them.

Police are yet to reveal the identities of the accused.

“Facts are being misrepresented from certain quarters about a recent incident in Purulia. The fact is, on the afternoon of January 11, there was a misunderstanding between three Gangasagar-bound sadhus with three local minor girls near Kashipur over language problem. The girls got scared and local people manhandled the sadhus and damaged their vehicle, alleging a kidnapping attempt,” a police statement read.

“Local police promptly intervened and rescued the sadhus. Twelve people have been arrested over the incident on the basis of a specific case. All possible assistance was rendered to the sadhus,” police said.

One of the sadhus, Madhur Goswami, said that had the police not come in time, “we would have been killed”. “The mob did not ask anything and started beating us. We did not file an FIR because we didn’t know anyone there. We don’t know whether those who attacked us have political affiliations,” he said.

The BJP alleged the accused had links to the TMC. In a social media post, the party’s IT cell head Amit Malviya wrote, “Absolutely shocking incident reported from Purulia in West Bengal. In a Palghar kind lynching, sadhus traveling to Gangasagar for Makar Sankranti were stripped and beaten by criminals, affiliated with the ruling TMC. In Mamata Banerjee’s regime, a terrorist like Shahjahan Sheikh gets state protection and sadhus are being lynched. It is a crime to be a Hindu in West Bengal.”

TMC’s Shahjahan Sheikh is an accused in the attack on a team of Enforcement Directorate officers during a search of his house in North 24 Parganas earlier this month.

BJP MP Jyotirmay Singh also met the sadhus on Sunday.

Hitting back, TMC leader Sushmita Dev said, “When it comes to women’s security and dignity of women, the BJP has failed again and again. We have seen that the members of the BJP IT cell have been embroiled in the rape case of BHU-IIT. We have seen that when it comes to women wrestlers, BJP has failed to protect them. We have seen in the ghastly case of Bilkis Bano which shook the nation, how the BJP stood by those behind the heinous crime. This double standards of the BJP must be exposed.”

The West Bengal BJP questioned Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s “deafening silence” and asked whether “these Hindu Sadhus are not worthy of your acknowledgment?”

TMC’s Sashi Panja, however, said BJP leaders were “falling back on their age-old practice of spreading rumours and trying to make it a political incident”.

On Saturday evening, Malviya posted another video online and wrote: “Another horrific video of sadhus being lynched in West Bengal has emerged, in which a man wearing fatigues is seen beating the modestly dressed sadhus, with their backs to the wall, mercilessly. Has Mamata Banerjee ordered the police to identify this man and charge him with attempt to murder or is she first checking his religion?”