3 held for Brigade bigotry against Muslim vendors, granted bail within hours
Telegraph | 12 December 2025
Three men with avowed saffron links who allegedly assaulted Muslim vendors for selling non-vegetarian food during a mass Gita recital at the Brigade Parade Grounds on Sunday were arrested early on Thursday.
A few hours later, a city court granted them bail, denying a police request for a week’s remand.
In the evening, leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said he had felicitated the three “brave Hindu warriors”. (See Page 5)
The police identified the three accused as Soumik Golder, Tarun Bhattacharya and Swarnendu Chakraborty. Some sources suggested that all three were Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) members.
Chakraborty’s Facebook profile introduces him as a state executive member of the BJP youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM).
Golder, 23, the first to have been identified from videos, was arrested from his home in Gobardanga, North 24-Parganas.
His arrest led the police to the other two — Bhattacharya, 51, from Uttarpara in Hooghly, and Chakraborty, 32, from Ashok Nagar in North 24-Parganas.
Bhattacharya’s mother-in-law, Swati Mukherjee, said he had eaten a patty after the seller told him it was vegetarian.
“After the first bite, he realised that there was chicken in it,” Mukherjee said.
Bhattacharya is a “promoter” (real estate developer), she said.
Chakraborty, the BJYM leader, had earlier been associated with RSS student arm Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, his father Prankrishna said.
Golder, who is physically challenged and walks with support, is a VHP member, BJP spokesperson Jeet Bose said.
“He (Golder) is not attached to the BJP. He is an active member of the VHP,” Bose said.
“I was present at the Maidan on Sunday. We heard that some sellers had wrongfully sold chicken patties saying they were veg patties. Some young men got angry but nothing much happened. The matter has been blown out of proportion.”
The Telegraph had earlier reported that several incidents of assault on food vendors, on the charge not just of chicken in patties but also of onion in jhal muri, had been alleged from different areas of the Gita recital venue.
The trio were arrested on the basis of complaints lodged with Maidan police station by two Muslim vendors who claimed to have been beaten up at the Gita recital venue.
The accused have been booked on the charges of unlawful assembly, wrongful restraint, voluntarily causing hurt, outraging religious feelings, criminal intimidation and mischief.
Police officers said all three were seen prominently in the videos of the assaults.
“The arrests were made on the basis of electronic evidence. They have admitted being present at the spot. They were arrested from their homes,” a senior officer said.
At the Bankshal court, the defence lawyers said that only one of the penal sections invoked against the accused was non-bailable.
“According to the police, the accused had hurt the religious sentiments of the victims,” one of the defence lawyers later told this newspaper.
“However, our prayer was that if someone was getting a group of people to eat chicken by falsely claiming these were veg patties, who is it that has actually hurt religious sentiments? A separate complaint has been lodged against (one of) the patty seller(s), too.”
The case against patty seller Sheikh Riyazul, too, has been registered with Maidan police station, accusing him of hurting religious sentiments.
“All the offences alleged in this case are bailable in nature except the offence u/s 299 of BNS which provides for deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious insulting its religion or religious beliefs,” the judge wrote.
“The prima facie evidence regarding the ingredients of such offence are not found in written complaint and CD.”
Rejecting the police plea, the court granted bail.
Riyazul said he was happy to learn about the arrests.
“I don’t want any vendor to experience what I faced. The assault may not have caused serious physical injuries, but the trauma is still alive,” he said from his ancestral home in Arambagh, Hooghly.
“I sustain my family by selling vegetables and chicken puffs at different places. I will return to Calcutta soon and resume my business.”
Muntaz Mallick, another patty seller who claims to have been assaulted during the Gita recital but was not one of the two complainants, is also in Arambagh. He said that after spending two or three days with his family, he would resume selling his stuff on the Maidan.