In another sign of the complete break down of law & order in West Bengal, a local TMC leader Tapas Mullick led a mob of TMC activists in beating 22-year-old ITI student,  Kaushik Purkait, to death in Diamond Harbour, South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal. But what made this shocking incident worse was the way in which the news was spun by certain media houses and Adarsh Liberals to force fit their ‘beef lynching’ narrative.

As per this news report in the Kolkata based Telegraph newspaper –

“A 22-year-old ITI student was beaten to death in Diamond Harbour allegedly by a Trinamul leader-led mob that mistook him for a buffalo thief last night. The mob, comprising mostly of suspected Trinamul activists, dragged Kaushik Purkait towards a club and assaulted him and released him only after his relatives paid Rs 60,000 for the stolen buffalo.

Kaushik, a second-year student of an ITI in south Calcutta and resident of Mandirbazar in South 24-Parganas, was visiting his aunt’s house in Diamond Harbour with his mother and sister on the occasion of Akshay Tritiya.

His mother Chandra, 43, said: “My son had gone out for a walk and was speaking on his mobile phone about 50 metres from the house when a group of local youths surrounded him and accused him of stealing a buffalo. Following an argument, the youths began beating Kaushik with rods and bamboo clubs.

Chandra lodged an FIR at Diamond Harbour police station, alleging that the mob was led by a Trinamul member of the ruling party-run Harindanga gram panchayat, Tapas Mullick. Ten persons were named in the FIR. Mullick’s cellphone was switched off tonight.

Kaushik’s aunt Sandhya Haldar said she and Chandra had rushed out of the house hearing a commotion. “We saw Kaushik being beaten up in front of the club. We requested the attackers to spare him, but they accused Kaushik of stealing a buffalo and demanded Rs 1.5 lakh. When we pleaded with them, they agreed to release Kaushik against a payment of Rs 60,000. They let him go only after we paid the amount,” Sandhya said.

By the time the mob released Kaushik, he was bleeding from wounds all over his body. He was taken to Diamond Harbour sub-divisional hospital, from where he was shifted to SSKM. He died this morning. “Kaushik had suffered serious head and neck injuries. That is why we had referred him to SSKM,” a doctor at the Diamond Harbour hospital said.

Kaushik’s father Kartik, 45, a hawker, was informed about the assault by Chandra over phone and he rushed to the Diamond Harbour hospital to take his son to SSKM. The police have arrested a woman and detained four youths named in the FIR. A murder case has been started. “After receiving the complaint, we raided the village and arrested one person and detained four. The others named in the FIR are absconding,” said C.S. Bardhan, the additional superintendent of police (west).”

Such incidents are tragically common place in West Bengal as HinduPost has been consistently highlighting. What makes it worse is that the rapidly deteriorating law & order situation in key border states like West Bengal or Bihar doesn’t get much attention in national media, leaving those in other parts of Bharat thinking that perceived intolerance, a murder in Dadri, a student suicide in Hyderabad, or an administrative appointment in FTII are the key issues facing the country.

What is more, our national media and the secular-liberal outrage brigade (SLOB) cherry-pick selective events or resort to outright distortion to peddle their favorite manufactured narratives – their current hobbyhorse being ‘beef lynching’ & ‘right to be anti-national’. Lets look at how this news about the ITI student’s lynching was distorted by a news site and some Adarsh Liberals who got hyper-excited at seeing a news item containing the words ‘cow smuggler’ and ‘lynching’. One well-known Adarsh Liberal on twitter even went to the extent of calling this act of political goondaism as an example of ‘Hindu terror’!

— वरुण (@varungrover) May 16, 2016

The tweet (translated from Hindi, it reads ‘A small piece of news for #HinduTerror deniers’) by Varun Grover, a comedian, screenwriter and lyricist was based on an article which appeared on indiatimes.com (a venture of Times Group) written by one Bobins Abraham. The article twists the story to make it appear like the student was lynched by a mob suspecting him to be a cow smuggler. The original version of the article even claimed that the murdered student was from IIT (as against ITI) – probably to sensationalize the news and grab more eyeballs. But even the revised version is still laced with factual inaccuracies and omits a key detail in the headline. Lets see what these discrepancies are –

• The headline omits to mention that the mob which beat the student to death was in fact led by a TMC leader. Would such a detail have been omitted if the leader had belonged to BJP or Shiv Sena?
• The headline and article mention that the mob suspected the student of being a ‘cow smuggler‘. But if one goes through the Telegraph article (Telegraph being a Kolkata based newspaper, and hence more reliable regarding this local news), it says that the mob mistook the student for a ‘buffalo thief‘.
• Now, some might wonder that ‘cow smuggler‘ & ‘buffalo thief‘ are one and the same – no, they are not. It makes a HUGE difference given the communally sensitive context in which the Indiatimes reporter was trying to spin the issue as one in which anti-beef Hindu activists beat up an innocent student suspecting him of stealing cows for beef. The truth is that Hindus adore and honor the cow and hence cow meat (beef) is banned in 24 out of 29 states of Bharat (West Bengal being an exception). There is no ban on buffalo meat anywhere in Bharat. Hence, there is no way that anti-beef sentiments had anything to do with this ghastly crime.

— Insanely Sane (@Sanity_3) May 16, 2016

• TMC is a party that is fundamentally and ideologically opposed to Hindutva ideology. TMC supremo Mamta Banerjee has given a free reign to Islamists in West Bengal to secure their votebank, and she and her party care two hoots for Hindu sentiments on issues like beef. Hence, distorting a lynching by TMC workers into an act by Hindu anti-beef activists, is yellow journalism of the worst kind which can only be attributed to either TRP-chasing or Hinduphobia.
• The Indiatimes reporter Bobins Abraham even gets it wrong on the reason for the student’s visit to his aunt’s place, where the crime occurred. His report says “The 24-year-old boy identified as Kaushik Purkait, was beaten up by a mob on Monday while he was visiting his aunt’s home to celebrate Kali puja“. The Telegraph says, “Kaushik, a second-year student of an ITI in south Calcutta and resident of Mandirbazar in South 24-Parganas, was visiting his aunt’s house in Diamond Harbour with his mother and sister on the occasion of Akshay Tritiya.” Anyone with the slightest familiarity of the Hindu festival calendar knows that Kali puja falls around the time of Diwali (in 2016, Kali Puja falls on 29 October 2016). Akshay Tritiya this year was on May 9, 2016.
• The article ends up trivializing a serious issue like cow smuggling, which is a major national security risk in the East of Bharat – cattle smuggling from West Bengal into Bangladesh is a major source of funding for the Islamist terror network operating on both sides of the international border.

What explains this blatant distortion of an incident to create a perception that Hindu bigots are running amok in the country, murdering people everywhere? And why is the serious breakdown of law & order in critical states like West Bengal being hidden from the national discourse? What price will the nation end up paying for this cancerous idea of secularism and liberalism that the mainstream media and Lutyens establishment peddles day in & out?