Rioting On The Wall

By making the spat with the governor public, Mamata Banerjee concedes her failure to control the Basirhat riots.

- Rabi Banerjee

Subhankar Chatterjee (name changed) is a computer engineer from Baduria in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal. He is a neighbour of Souvik Sarkar, a 17-year-old student who was arrested for allegedly uploading an offensive post on Facebook on July 2, triggering riots in the area.

I met Subhankar at a coffee shop in Kolkata as he had fled his home because of the riots. “The post was derogatory to Muslims,” said Subhankar. “But Souvik could not have done it. Now there are two accounts in his name,” said Subhankar, who was on Souvik’s friends’ list on Facebook. Both accounts have been deleted. The son of a poor mason, Souvik lost his mother when he was eight. Two of his uncles work in the police department.

“On July 3, I saw a large number of local people entering Souvik’s house. Later, some outsiders raising slogans entered the house, torched a portion of it and stole all valuables,” said Subhankar. The police just about managed to arrest the boy before the attack.

For a few hours after the attack, no one—even Tushar Singha, chairman of the Baduria municipality—could enter the locality. “There were at least 1,000 men. They set fire to a part of the police station and seven police vehicles, after the police refused to hand over Souvik to them,” said Subhankar. Violence spread quickly. Even women were not spared. The attacks, which were initially one-sided, soon turned into a full-fledged communal riot, spreading to other parts of Basirhat.

Baduria is part of the Basirhat subdivision, which has a sizeable Muslim population. “Hindus and Muslims in Basirhat used to be an example for the rest of the country. But that has been shattered,” said Subhankar.