The intense throat-cut competition of Bengal elections came to an end on 2nd May with the results declared in favour of All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). AITC consecutively won for the third time in West Bengal. Honorable Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took her oath as the elected Chief Minister for the third time in a row on 5th May. Mamata Banerjee, in her trademark white Sari and shawl, took oath in Bengali. Banerjee said her first priority would be to tackle Covid and also appealed to people to maintain peace. The ceremony was a low-key programme given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, officials said.
Moments after swearing-in Mamata Banerjee for her third straight term, Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar said, “Our priority is that we must bring an end to this senseless violence that has affected society at large. I have every hope that the CM on an urgent basis will take all steps to restore rule of law.” The ceremony came amid mounting pressure on the TMC government over the post-poll violence that claimed at least 14 lives in two days. Banerjee has asked the administration to control the violence at the earliest. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called up Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar and the Union Home Ministry seeking a report from its state counterpart.
Amid all these post-poll violence, a few images took the internet by storm as several netizens kept posting images of a girl on social media with the claim that she is the latest victim of post-poll violence in West Bengal. Opposition parties BJP, Congress, and Left-Front, accused Trinamool Congress of instigating post-poll violence. According to the claim of several Facebook users this 20-year-old girl is from West Midnapore’s district, named Pingla, and was gang-raped and murdered by “Rohingya and Bangladeshi jihadis” for supporting BJP.
BJP’s Saumitra Khan shared images with a claim that the college student was raped and killed by “goons.” He further linked the incident to Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras case that took place in September 2020 and wrote, “there was political juice (motive) in Hathras, but not in Medinipur?” Khan captioned the collage of the images as, “Forgive me sister. There is political juice here as it was in Hathras. Where is the elite class of Kolkata? Where are your candles? West Medinipur’s Debra College’s second year student **** was raped and killed brutally by goons.”
Viral tweets have also falsely alleged that the woman was a BJP supporter and was killed by six TMC goons and hanged outside her house.
After searching further thoroughly, it was found that though the rape and murder incident is true, but according to family members and police, there is no communal or political angle to it. Two masons and their female aide were arrested. Both the victim and accused are from the same religion. The victim’s father testified the incident and said, “After lunch, she’d gone to clean the utensils as usual, but went missing since then. We started searching all around and finally found her body in an under-construction house next to ours. Three masons, including a woman, were working there and we filed an FIR at the police station.” Based on FIR filed by the victim’s family at Pingla police station, local police arrested the three accused. They have been identified as B Murmu from Belda, Chhotu Munda from Jharkhand and Tapati Patra from Sabang.
Sankha Chatterjee, an officer in charge of Pingla police station denied the viral narrative with the incident. Additionally, a family member of the deceased stated that the woman was not affiliated to any political party and that the social media narratives were falsely claiming the murder as a political killing.
An article by Anandabazar Patrika that was published on 4th May had mentioned the incident that took place in Pingla area in Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal. An article carried by the Bengali vertical of Hindustan Times also stated that the college student was allegedly raped and killed in a house and as many as three people, including a woman, have been arrested.
Clearly, an incident of a woman being allegedly raped and killed was communalised by many social media users with some falsely claiming that there is a political angle to it after the chaos surged by post-poll violence after the Bengal elections.
