Even as West Bengal police filed a third case against a BJP leader over inflammatory posts in the social media — which the Mamata Banerjee government alleges is at the root of the communal violence in Basirhat — the BJP on Wednesday announced a nationwide campaign to “Save Bengal” from the ruling Trinamool Congress.

After Delhi BJP leader Nupur Sharma, against whom two cases were registered by the Kolkata police for passing off a 2002 Gujarat riots image as representative of the arson and violence in Basirhat, the State’s Criminal Investigation Department arrested BJP IT cell in-charge Tarun Sengupta for allegedly posting fake images and videos of a Muslim police officer beating a Hindu man on Facebook.

According to PTI, Sengupta had posted a video on his Facebook timeline on April 17 and had claimed that it showed police officers beating up a Hanuman bhakt on Hanuman Jayanti on April 11 in Birbhum. A complaint against him was lodged by the officer in-charge of Birbhum Special Operations Group at Suri police station on April 25.

He was produced in the court of Suri in the district chief judicial magistrate PC Burman today. CID counsel sought 10 days remand of Sengupta but the court granted it eight days.

The BJP, in the meantime, asserted that the ruling TMC in West Bengal is levelling fake charges in order to hide its own complicity and “politics of appeasement”. To stop “Bengal from burning”, the ruling party at the Centre would launch a nationwide “Save Bengal” campaign from Rajghat on July 13, it said.

BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi addressed a press conference here to allege that the TMC is busy appeasing Muslims and “repressing” the Hindu population in Bengal.

Repressing the population

“The fact is that in Bengal politics is unfolding in two ways — appeasement on one side and repression on the other. I got to know one teacher from east Bengal.

“This person was saying that we cannot allow a second partition, we came to this country because of Jihadi Islam. This person has been taken away and not even produced before the Magistrate. This is the level of repression against Hindus,” said Lekhi.

She then went on to describe how the “politics of appeasement” is being practised.

“We from the BJP had gone to Basirhat where a number of SC/STs live, surrounded by all kinds of people from across the border. They won’t allow bus services or any amenities to reach the marginalised people belonging to SC/ST communities.

“A person named Shanshah was named in shooting and terrorising the marginalised people. I picked up bullets that were evidence and gave it to the police. But the evidence was not collected.

“Someone lost a limb, receiving bullets. Some very marginalised people suffered injuries but people perpetrating harm to them were not even arrested. This is the way appeasement is happening,” said Lekhi.

For these reasons, the BJP spokesperson said, the party would be carrying out a long campaign to “save” Bengal.

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