BJP, far-Right accounts don't want to believe that vandal of Kali idol in WB's Basirhat has mental health issues

By Shinjinee Majumder on 13th March 2025

On March 9, BJP leader Amit Malviya said West Bengal was turning into "another Bangladesh". Criticizing the law-and-order situation in the state, Malviya, who heads the BJP's information and technology cell, cited several instances of 'injustice' against Hindus.

Among the cases he listed was one where the statue of a Hindu deity, Kali, was vandalised in the Basirhat South Assembly constituency.

"...an idol of Goddess Kali has been vandalized in Sankhachara Bazaar, located in the Basirhat South Assembly constituency," Malviya wrote on X with an image of the vandalised idol. (Archive)

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On the same day, Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh, a former MLA, made a full thread on the incident and shared it on X. At the end of the thread, Ghosh remarked "With each passing day, these fundamentalist miscreants are becoming more reckless, incited and protected by the TMC". (Archives: 1, 2, 3)

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Interestingly, Ghosh's X thread came even after the Basirhat Police's clarification on Facebook that the man accused of vandalizing the idol in Basirhat had 'mental health issues' and there was no communal angle to the incident. The police also said that any rumour-mongering in the case would be dealt with strongly.

আজ বসিরহাটে একটি কালী মন্দিরের একটি মূর্তি নষ্ট হওয়ার ঘটনা সম্পর্কে ভুল তথ্য এবং সাম্প্রদায়িক অশান্তি ছড়ানোর জন্য...

Posted by Basirhat Police District on Sunday 9 March 2025

The following day, Malviya shared a video on X of Hindu outfits carrying out a "massive protest" against the desecration of the idol. (Archive)

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Following the police statement, the Bharatiya Janata Party Bengal's official handle took to X. Mocking the state machinery, the party said that the police aided by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, were using the term "mentally unstable" as a crutch to let vandals go scot free.

In their posts, they referred to two cases of vandalism of Hindu idols in West Bengal districts—one in Basirhat and another in Baruipur. The X post said: "In both instances, the police have claimed that the acts were carried out by mentally challenged individuals... Why are mosques never attacked under similar circumstances?" In another tweet, BJP West Bengal claimed that "Mentally unstable" had become TMC's new get-out-of-jail card for temple vandals. (Archives- 1, 2)

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Other accounts that aligned with the BJP and the Right-wing in their bios also ridiculed the police statement.

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All the posts seemed to be accusing the police of only labelling vandals of Hindu temples as "mentally challenged".

What Happened in Basirhat?

Alt News looked into the incident in Basirhat for this story. We found a press conference by local Trinamool Congress MLA Saptarshi Banerjee, in which he said that on the morning of March 9, at around 11:10 am, he received reports that an incident involving individuals of different faiths unfolded at Shankchura Bazar in Basirhat. His team rushed to the spot and found a temple idol partially damaged. With the help of CCTV footage and the police, they identified a young man responsible for it and located him. However, when they tracked him, his family, who was living with him, told the police that he was undergoing psychiatric treatment and was on medication. They also gave the police his medical prescriptions. Banerjee, while addressing the press, added that until recently, the man had been kept restrained as corroborated by his family, but caused the incident in an unstable state when he was released. The local administration promptly took measures to maintain peace in the area. Banerjee also showed the prescriptions on camera without revealing the identity of the accused.

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We reached out to another local leader in Basirhat for more details on the incident and they informed us that the accused was Muslim and had mental health issues. Alt News accessed the prescriptions and the medications prescribed to him. We also found his name and had it verified by the police to corroborate his identity. Considering the sensitive nature of the issue, Alt News will not reveal the name.

One of the prescriptions we saw was from the Barasat Government Medical College and Hospital dated September 11, 2024, while the other prescriptions were under the stamp of a consultant psychiatrist. His last evaluation was done on January 1.

We reached out to another psychiatrist to determine what such medications are generally prescribed for. After a preliminary reading of the documents, they informed us that the group of drugs prescribed to the man are a combination of mood stabilisers, antipsychotics and antidepressants. These may be prescribed for psychosis, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. However, they categorically said that this was not definitive and that the patient had to be seen and assessed through multiple sessions to determine the exact diagnosis, which only the treating doctor could do.

So, as it stands, the BJP and far-Right influencers have been mocking and undermining the root cause of the incident in Basirhat, dismissing the accused's mental health issues and saying that Trinamool Congress has been using it as a "trump card". However, the documents confirm that the accused was indeed undergoing treatment for mental health issues.

Alt News has, in the past, done several stories in which social media users have shared baseless conspiracy theories regarding individuals struggling with mental health disorders, some of them Hindu, indulging in vandalism. In one case, a Hindu man, suffering mentally, was thrashed near a temple in Andhra Pradesh and his video was viral with conspiracy theories that he was Muslim. In another case, social media users, including BJP leaders, had accused a mentally unstable man of setting an idol on fire. Turns out that man was just foraging for food at the temple and tried to light a lamp there when the picture of the goddess caught fire.