Facebook post sparks communal violence in WB's Basirhat; 4 BSF companies deployed

Basirhat: Four companies of central paramilitary forces were rushed to Basirhat’s Baduria and its adjoining areas on Tuesday evening in wake of the violence due to communal clashes there.

Deputy Inspector General (South Bengal Frontier) of the Border Security Force (BSF) RPS Jaswal informed that four companies of the BSF troops were deployed at Baduria Basirhat, Swarupnagar and Deganga.

Besides a Rapid Action Force (RAF) team of the Kolkata Police, another contingent of force of the Howrah City Police led by its police commissioner DP Singh have also been deployed in the violence-hit areas.

Riot erupted in the area close to the Indo-Bangla border after a youth, Sourav Sarkar from Rudrapur, allegedly uploaded an inflammatory post on his Facebook account which went viral and hurt the sentiment of a minority community on Sunday leading to a clash.

Although Sourav fled at night, he was later arrested by the police from a paddy field on Monday morning. The accused has been remanded by the Basirhat Sub-Division Court in the police custody for four days.

But the public anger continued as many roads were blocked and several houses were torched by the demonstrators. On Tuesday afternoon when Superintendent of Police (North 24 Parganas) Bhaskar Mukherjee visited Jadurhati, he came under attack as well.

The IPS officer was injured after he was beaten up while his vehicle was ransacked by an angry mob.