Photo of vandalised Gandhi bust from West Bengal falsely shared as Bangladesh incident

by Prantik Ali

A photo is viral on social media, showing a decapitated statue of Mahatma Gandhi. Amid the escalating diplomatic tensions between India and Bangladesh, several users have circulated the photo as from Bangladesh.

X user Janardan Mishra @janardanspeaks posted the viral photo stating: “Bapu went on a hunger strike to give 55 crore rupees. He demanded complete non-violence from Hindus and supported Muslims’ right to protect their religion. Today, Bangladeshis showed their respect for Gandhi ji by performing STSJ (Sar Tan Se Juda).” (Archive)

Another X user, Kajal Kushwaha (@_KajalKushwaha), posted the photo with the same claim. At the time of this article being written, the post had managed to gather more than 24,000 views, and had been re-shared more than 750 times. (Archive)

The claim was also made by other X users, including @yagnaja, @Mata_Bhakta, @GolfVictor007, @brijeshchaodhry and others. (Archived links: 1, 2, 3, 4)

Screenshots below:

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Fact Check

To check whether the photo of the decapitated statue was indeed from Bangladesh, as claimed on social media, we ran a reverse image search on the viral photo. This led us to this Facebook post from a profile named ‘CCN Sambad’, a news/media outlet based in Siliguri, West Bengal.

According to the caption of this Facebook post, which is in Bengali, the act of desecration took place in Chakulia, where violence reportedly had broken out during a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) hearing in the BDO’s office.

Chakulia is an assembly constituency in North Dinajpur district in West Bengal.

We then ran a relevant keyword search in Bengali, which led us to this news report published by ABP Ananda, on January 16.

The report notes that on January 16, residents of Chakulia’s Goalpokhar area attacked the BDO office following reports that nearly 69,000 people from the zone had been summoned by the Election Commission for an SIR-related hearing. The move came despite claims that an initial hearing had already been conducted in Chakulia.

A report by The Indian Express quoted North Dinajpur SP Jobi Thomas as confirming that the BDO office had been ransacked by the agitated mob. The ensuing attacks, which persisted despite police lathicharge, left six police personnel injured, including the officer-in-charge.

Another Indian Express report, published on January 17, mentions that 19 people had been arrested in connection to the incident, several of whom claimed no association to the violence. A person who works in the BDO office talked to the outlet and revealed that the office came under attack around 9:30 am. It was around 12 noon when the superintendent of police arrived with his force and took the situation under control. By that time, the mob had enough time to ransack several departments in the office, destroy documents, set fire to computers and other equipment, and vandalise the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, which was installed on the premises two years ago.

We also found a video excerpt from Zee 24 Ghanta, which reported on the act of vandalism.

 

The official handle of BJP’s West Bengal unit had also posted about the act of desecration, on January 16.

To sum up, the photo of the decapitated statue of Mahatma Gandhi is not from Bangladesh as posts viral on social media claim. It is from Goalpokhar in Chakulia area of North Dinajpur in West Bengal, where on January 15, a mob ransacked the BDO office.

It is pertinent to add that BJP national executive member and author Swapan Dasgupta (@swapan55), too, shared the video. Though he pointed out that the incident was from West Bengal, but he incorrectly claimed that it was from Murshidabad district.

 

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