Kolkata: On the day the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls began across West Bengal, one person allegedly committed suicide due to the fear of the exercise.
An official said that a contract worker from Uluberia in Howrah district committed suicide.
On Tuesday, over 80,000 booth-level officers (BLOs) began visiting homes to distribute enumeration forms as part of the SIR exercise.
According to the police, the deceased has been identified as Zaheer Mal, a resident of the Khalisani Gram Panchayat area of Uluberia Purba Assembly constituency.
The 28-year-old youth worked as a daily wage labourer. Officers of Uluberia police station recovered his hanging body from his house. However, no suicide note was recovered from the house. The family claimed that Zaheer was in fear of SIR and therefore took his life.
Regina Bibi, the wife of the deceased, told media persons, “He was terrified of SIR. He always said that he would be sent to Bangladesh. This fear had been working in his mind for the last few days. He committed suicide out of fear.”
Following the incident, a Trinamool Congress delegation went to the deceased’s house at the instructions of the party’s All India General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee.
After meeting the deceased’s family, State Public Works and Public Health Engineering Minister Pulak Roy said, “Our party stands by this family. An atmosphere of fear has been created in the state in the name of conducting SIR. It is being conveyed that speaking in Bengali language means being a Bangladeshi. I will tell the central government to stop the politics of death.”
On the other hand, the BJP claimed that Trinamool is responsible for such incidents.
“They are misleading the common people. People are unnecessarily afraid. The Mamata Banerjee-Abhishek Banerjee party is trying to fulfil its political interests by threatening people over the SIR,” said Union Minister of State for Education and DoNER, Sukanta Majumdar.
Trinamool Congress has been highlighting alleged incidents of suicides in West Bengal due to the fear of the SIR and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The party has alleged that ever since the SIR was announced, people have been fearing that their names would be removed from the Bengal voters’ list.
On October 28, Pradeep Kar, a resident of Panihati in North 24 Parganas district, committed suicide allegedly due to fear of SIR. The police claimed that they recovered a ‘suicide note’ which said the same thing.
Meanwhile, Khairul Sheikh, a resident of Dinhata in Cooch Behar district, tried to commit suicide by consuming poison, allegedly due to the fear of the same issue.
It was also alleged that 95-year-old Kshitish Majumdar of West Midnapore district committed suicide due to fear of SIR on October 30. The family claimed that his name was not on the 2002 voters’ list.
On November 2, a hotel owner from Digha died at his home in Ramnagar, East Midnapore district. The deceased’s name is Sheikh Sirajuddin. The family claimed that the elderly businessman got worried after seeing his father’s name wrong in a document. He died of heart disease.
On the same day, the family of a migrant worker from West Bengal claimed that the worker fell ill and died while working in Tamil Nadu after hearing about SIR. The deceased’s name is Bimal Santra (51). He is a resident of Nabagram in the Jamalpur area of East Burdwan district.
Meanwhile, 60-year-old Hasina Beg, a resident of Ward No. 20 of Dankuni Municipality, in Hooghly district, died on Monday. Her name was not on the 2002 voters’ list.
(IANS)
