Party loyalty or religion? CPM, BJP battle it out over Jafrabad victims’ identity
Times of India | 18 April 2025
Kolkata: The murder of Haragobindo Das and his son Chandan has triggered a war of words between CPM and BJP, with parties arguing as to which should take precedence — the Jafrabad family's "political identity" or its "religious identity". While CPM claims the father and son to be party supporters, BJP says the fact that they were devout Hindus should be considered as their actual identity.
CPM's state secretary Md Salim had met the victims' family on April 14.
With CPM refraining from pointing fingers at any particular community for the murders, BJP has called it a result of "religious persecution" and asked the Left party not to turn away from facts.
Bengal BJP, which observed ‘Hindu Martyrs' Day' on Wednesday, claimed Bengal's Hindus were being tortured every day. Leader of the opposition in the assembly Suvendu Adhikari, who alleged that an "anti-Hindu" govt in the state had allowed the miscreants a free run, held a protest march in front of the assembly.
"They (the Das duo) used to make idols of deities, specifically of Goddess Durga. The murder happened because Haragobindo Das's younger son married a Muslim girl from a neighbouring village, which was held against them," read a social media post by BJP neta Rajarshi Lahiri.
Salim on Thursday said BJP was trying to set a binary once again and hide the intelligence failure of BSF. "The entire village was resisting a communal clash... We should not engage ourselves in looking for religious identities... A corpse has no religion," he said.
"People were burnt alive in Bogtui. Were they killed because they were Muslims? BJP is resorting to a blame game now as they want to distract people from govt's failure. The violence in Murshidabad was a result of the failure of both state and Centre. If the miscreants came from Bangladesh, the intelligence of Centre failed to detect that," Salim added.
BJP chief whip Shankar Ghosh said that the exodus of refugees from Bangladesh after the partition was a result of "religious persecution" and Left Front had refused to accept that. "The same pattern can be seen in Murshidabad. Haragobindo and Chandan Das were killed not for their political affiliation, but for their religious identities. CPM did not mention their names initially and took out an ‘insaaf yatra'. It is clear that they tried to safeguard failures of state govt," Ghosh said.