Amid back-to-back lynchings in West Bengal, another incident of mob attack was reported on July 7 with a middle-aged man dying after he was beaten up by a mob in the Bhangar area of Kolkata on suspicion of theft.
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The victim is Azgar Molla from the Phulbari area. His family members recovered the body after it lay for about one hour at the spot located 500 metres from the Bhangar police station.
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According to the police, the exact reasons behind the death will be ascertained after the post-mortem and the person appeared to be drunk. The alleged incident occurred in the early hours of Sunday following the theft in Bhangar Bazar. Bhangar, located in South 24 Parganas, has been a hotbed of political violence and recently the area has been brought under the Kolkata police to contain incidents of violence.
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Incidents of mob violence have been reported in Kolkata, Bidhannagar, Jhargram and Hooghly where people have lost their lives on suspicion of theft. In all the cases, the victims were poor and subjected to torture on suspicion of theft. In other incidents of flogging at Chopra in Uttar Dinajpur and Fulbari in Jalpaiguri, women were targeted allegedly for “extramarital affair”.
The West Bengal Assembly had in 2019 passed The West Bengal (Prevention of Lynching) Bill following a string of similar lynching cases. The Bill has proposed stronger provisions, including death penalty for those involved in mob attacks. However, certain questions were raised by the then Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar and the fate of the Bill has been lying in limbo since then.
The incident of mob assault has sparked a political war of words between the Opposition parties and the ruling Trinamool Congress.