Bengal woman’s murder by relatives peddled with false ‘Love Jihad’ narrative

The story uses only screenshots and not the actual video in view of its graphic nature.

A video is going viral on social media in which a blue travel bag is seen lying on the ground with several people standing around it. When it is opened in the presence of police, a woman’s body is found inside. The video is being shared with the claim that a Muslim man named Akram killed a Hindu woman after promising to marry her.

An X user named एक भारतीय हिन्दू (@rashtrawadi_ak) shared the video with the claim that this was a case of ‘Love Jihad’. According to the tweet, man in West Bengal named Akram lured a Hindu woman with the promise of marriage and then killed her and stuffed her body inside the suitcase. (Archived link)

Another user named Khushi also tweeted the clip with the same claim referring to the accused as ‘Abdul’. (Archived link)

Of late, ‘Abdul’ has become a placeholder name for Muslim men in social and mainstream media. Primarily used by Right Wing influencers, the catchline ‘Mera Abdul Alag Hai’ (Translation: My Abdul is Different) is a sarcastic jibe at interfaith relationships involving Muslim men, insinuating that all Muslim men are potential killers. The use of this trope became mainstream and reached the larger masses in 2022 after the news of 26-year-old Shraddha Walkar’s gruesome murder broke, where her Muslim partner Aftab Ameen Poonawalla was the main accused. 

Fact Check

We performed a reverse image search using frames taken from the viral video on Google. This led us to a tweet by journalist Amit Bhardwaj from February 25. In this tweet, he shared a picture and video of a police van along with the viral video and wrote that two women were nabbed while trying to dump a trolley suitcase in the Ganges at Kumartuli Ghat in Kolkata. Locals raised an alarm due to their suspicious activity, and both the women were caught. When the bag was opened, they recovered the decapitated corpse of a woman. 

We performed a keyword searching using terms related to this case. This led us to an article by the Indian Express dated February 26. The report covers the incident, stating that a case was registered against a 55-year-old woman named Aarti Ghosh and her 34-year-old daughter, Falguni, for allegedly murdering 50-year-old Sumita Ghosh and trying to destroy evidence. According to police, Aarti Ghosh alias Mithu lived in Madhyamgram with her daughter Falguni. Aarti worked as a househelp, while Falguni was separated from her husband who lived in Jorhat, Assam. The deceased has been identified here as Sumita Ghosh, sister of Falguni’s father-in-law. Deputy police commissioner (Port Division) Hari Krishna Pai said that as per the statement of the accused, they had a quarrel with the victim and had killed her in a fit of rage.

According to a report in  The Times of India, police stated that during an altercation between Falguni and Sumita, Falguni allegedly pushed Sumita against the wall, due to which she fainted. However, when Sumita regained consciousness, they started fighting again. This time, Falguni hit her face and neck with a brick after which she collapsed and died. Both the accused and the victim are relatives in this case and there is no communal angle to it.

To sum up, several social media users shared the news of a murder in West Bengal in which a woman was killed by her own relatives with a false communal angle, claiming that a Muslim youth named Akram killed a Hindu woman on the pretext of marriage and stuffed her body in a suitcase.

Read Alt News’s detailed report on how words like ‘Abdul’ and ‘suitcase’ are often used to target the Muslim community: ‘My Abdul is not like that’: Use of the name ‘Abdul’ in the mainstream to defame the Muslim community