BJYM’s Abhijat Mishra falsely claims illegal Bangladeshis attack Bihari family in West Bengal
A video is going viral on social media shows that a woman crying and complaining that the police took her brother away after her neighbor vandalized their house. She claimed that they broke the gate and window of her house. The woman alleged that the family was attacked because they are from Bihar. She continues to sob throughout the video.
Abhijat Mishra, national general secretary of Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha (BJYM), BJP’s youth wing posted the same viral video.
The post reads: “ये बिहार की युवती, सिलीगुड़ी बंगाल में रहती हैं लेकिन ममता बानो के बंगलादेशी मुस्लिम घुसपैठियों ने इनके घर पर हमला कर दिया इनकी क्या हालत की आप देखिए बिहारी होने की सजा.” #मरता_हिन्दू_जलता_बंगाल
Translation: “This young woman from Bihar stays in Siliguri in Bengal. But Mamata Banegree’s illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh have attacked her. Look at her condition. Punished for being a Bihari.” #HinduDieBengalBurns.
Mishra’s tweet has been retweeted over 11,000 times.
ये बिहार की युवती, सिलीगुड़ी बंगाल में रहती हैं
लेकिन ममता बानो के बंगलादेशी मुस्लिम घुसपैठियों ने इनके घर पर हमला कर दिया इनकी क्या हालत की आप देखिएबिहारी होने की सजा #मरता_हिन्दू_जलता_बंगाल pic.twitter.com/JNU1yLFFiR
— Abhijat Mishra (@AbhijatMishr) May 13, 2020
Many other users also posted the video with the same claim.
इस #बेटी का दर्द सुने
ये बिहार की युवती, सिलीगुड़ी बंगाल में रहती हैं
लेकिन ममता बानो के बंगलादेशी मुस्लिम घुसपैठियों ने इनके घर पर हमला कर दिया इनकी क्या हालत की आप देखिएहिन्दू भाई ज्यादा से ज्यादा #रिट्वीट करे
#मरता_हिन्दू_जलता_बंगाल pic.twitter.com/ic2mFxC6kI
— महेश नायक 🚩🚩 (@Real_NayakJi) May 13, 2020
The video is going viral on Facebook with the same claim.
TRUTH
As the viral claim, nowhere in the video does the woman claim that she and her family were attacked by illegal Muslim Bangladeshi immigrants.
Translation of the video: “Police took my younger brother away without any reason. We tried asking them what his fault was but they took him away. We are treated very badly here. This is because our father is no more and we have no guardian as my mother is a cancer patient. We don’t engage in fights. People try to boss us around. Today they’ve completely vandalized our house. They were beating us in front of the police and nobody did anything. Please help us! I don’t know what to do. They hit my mother as well. She is bleeding and we can’t take her to a doctor as we are not being allowed to step out of our house. When we try to go out they hit us. Nobody is coming for our help. They are saying don’t let these Biharis stay here. We won’t let Biharis stay here. We’ve purchased land here with our own money. Is it not our right to stay in West Bengal only because we are Biharis?”
As per her claim, this is an issue of regionalism as opposed to religion.
We found that Siliguri Police Commissionerate’s Facebook page shared a post which said that there is no communal angle to the story. As per the post, “A case has been lodged at Cyber Crime PS against Abhijat Mishra for false propaganda for making the issue a communal in his Twitter account.” The post also informed that the woman in the video is Anuradha Pandey and her family was heckled by Rubi Das and his family on May 12. Thus the social media claim that illegal “Muslim” immigrants from Bangladeshi attacked them is false. Siliguri Police Commissionerate further informed that a complaint was registered at New Jalpaiguri Police Station.
West Bengal Police has also confirmed the same case on their official twitter handle.
This incident was also reported by Siliguri Times on 12 May. According to the report, “A clash allegedly erupted between two families in Siliguri’s Bhaktinagar area over the disposal of garbage.” As per the report, several members of the families were injured in the incident.
This confirms that the lady and her family harassed by illegal Bangladesh immigrants is false and misleading.
