Sandheshkhali is a village in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas District which is close to India’s border with Bangladesh. This remote corner of India made headlines earlier this year following over 700 cases of crimes against economically disadvantaged Hindus by Sheikh Shahjahan, an influential political leader and member of the state’s ruling party, TMC. In February, Shahjahan went on the run after he came under the spotlight of India’s Financial Crime Agency which raided his property in connection to a high-profile scam. In the days that followed local women staged a series of protests against Shahjajan and his aids, Shibaprasad Hazra and Uttam Sardar, with allegations of rape, illegal land grabbing and other forms of exploitation.
As protests grew and the courts and other government agencies got involved, more local women found the courage to recount horrific stories which revealed over a decade of exploitation by Shahjanan specifically targeting Hindu women. Sexual violence was used as a tool to intimidate and oppress Hindu women, with many families recounting how Shahjahan and his men would arrive at their houses to pick the most attractive Hindu women to take to their local party office to be gang-raped and beaten through the night. Independent investigations reveal how local police and the TMC party leadership were complicit in these crimes.
The horrific stories of Hindus in Sandheshkhali are not unique. Hindus in the Bengal region have suffered from some of the worst examples of violence at the hands of Islamist extremists since the early 1900s. Whilst Hindus in Bangladesh have become a minority, the Indian state of West Bengal has witnessed horrific anti-Hindu violence since 1947. With its long and porous border with Bangladesh, Hindus have become minorities in several districts of the state with the influx of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants. Local Bengali Hindus accuse the TMC government of appeasing Islamic extremists and relying on the growing Muslim population as a vote bank.
Photo from @arunpudur via X used under fair usage