TMC-BJP row over West Bengal migrant worker's death in Maharashtra

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress on Thursday sharpened the campaign to brand the Bharatiya Janata Party as “Bangla Birodhi” after a 24-year-old migrant worker from West Bengal was murdered in Maharashtra, ruled by a coalition led by the saffron party.

Mamata took to X to call the killing of Sukhen Mahato at Shikrapur in Pune a ‘hate crime’. “A young man was hunted, tortured, and murdered for his language, his identity, his roots. This is the direct consequence of a climate where xenophobia is weaponised, and innocents are turned into targets,” the TMC supremo posted on X.

Her party leaders alleged that the migrant worker from Bandwan in Purulia, West Bengal, had been killed for speaking Bangla. “Bengal will respond. Democratically,” the TMC posted on the social media platform, adding that the state would drive the final nail into the BJP’s political coffin and decisively reject its politics of hate.

The BJP, however, dismissed the TMC supremo and her party’s allegation, citing the statement of police at Shikrapur in Pune on the investigation into the incident.

“I am shaken, enraged, and sickened beyond words by the barbaric murder of Sukhen Mahato…” Mamata posted on X. “This is nothing short of a hate crime. A young man was hunted, tortured, and murdered for his language, his identity, his roots. This is the direct consequence of a climate where xenophobia is weaponised, and innocents are turned into targets.”

With the next assembly elections in West Bengal just a few weeks away, the ruling TMC has been trying to build a campaign around Bangaliyana or the pride of being Bengali to counter its principal challenger BJP’s Hindutva blitz. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party has been accusing the saffron party’s governments in other states, like Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Odisha, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, as well as the National Capital Territory of Delhi, of harassing the Bengali-speaking migrant workers from West Bengal, branding them as illegal migrants from Bangladesh and, in some cases, even deporting them to the neighbouring country without the due process of law.

“I demand immediate arrests and exemplary punishment of the perpetrators. And, to Sukhen’s family, I say that Bengal stands with you in this hour of unimaginable grief. No effort will be spared to secure justice,” the state’s chief minister wrote on X.

The BJP, however, claimed that the findings of the police investigation had revealed something entirely different. “No linguistic profiling. No regional hate. No identity-based attack whatsoever. The facts do not support that claim. Police findings indicate that Sukhen Mahato and two others were under the influence of alcohol when a fight broke out.

"The altercation escalated and turned fatal. What happened was a criminal clash, not a hate crime,” the saffron party’s unit in West Bengal posted. “There is no proof of identity-based targeting. The case is being handled as a straightforward criminal matter arising out of a drunken brawl.”