Brutal Assault On Sadhus In Bengal’s Purulia Triggers Outrage, BJP Says ‘Crime To Be Hindu In Bengal’

A group of sadhus who were going to the Gangasagar Mela were brutally assaulted by a mob in Purulia district in the western part of Bengal. 

Though videos of the shocking assault that happened on Friday (January 12) were doing the rounds on social media since evening, it is not known what triggered the attack on the group of five-odd sadhus. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was quick to blame the Trinamool Congress. Party spokesperson and head of its IT cell, Amit Malviya, posted a distressing video of the assault on X. 

The post read: “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”. 

BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar also posted a video of the assault on X and condemned the incident. 

The Trinamool Congress or the state government did not react to the incident or the allegations hurled by BJP leaders till Saturday (13 January) morning. 

The assault has brought back memories of the April 2020 lynching of two sadhus and the driver of the vehicle they were travelling in at Gadchinchale village in Maharashtra’s Palghar district. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government which was in power in the state then had drawn a lot of flak for the lynching. 

The BJP has equated the assault on sadhus in Purulia with the Palghar lynchings. “The criminals who assaulted the sadhus in Purulia are all linked to the Trinamool,” state BJP chief Majumdar told Swarajya. 

BJP leaders said that while the Mamata Banerjee government is protecting Trinamool strongman Shahjahan Sheikh, whose supporters attacked Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials who had gone to search Sheikh’s residence in South 24 Parganas district, it cannot protect Hindus in the state. 

In one of the videos, an SUV that the sadhus were travelling in was vandalised. Some of the sadhus were stripped naked and beaten up. In one of the videos, a man wearing a police uniform was seen beating up the sadhus with a lathi. 

The Gangasagar Mela at Sagardwip in South 24 Parganas district of Bengal attracts lakhs of Hindu pilgrims. Sagardwip is located at the spot where the Ganga flows into the Bay of Bengal. 

Taking a dip at the confluence on Makar Sankranti is considered to be holy by Hindus. Last year, the mela attracted an estimated 51 lakh pilgrims, including thousands of sadhus, from all over the country. 

 Watch this and this video.