13-yr-old girl killed in Trinamool Congress victory celebration

A female student of primary school was killed in Kaliganj in West Bengal’s Nadia district on Monday after bombs were allegedly hurled from a Trinamool Congress victory celebration rally taken out even before the results of the assembly bypoll were officially announced.
The ruling party candidate, Alifa Ahmed, eventually won the Kaliganj seat by a landslide margin of 50,049 votes over her nearest BJP rival, the ECI website declared.
Police said 13-year-old Tamanna Khatun suffered splinter injuries and was declared dead on arrival when taken to the nearest medical facility.
One person, identified as Akhtar Sheikh, was arrested for his alleged involvement in the incident, an officer said.
Locals claimed the suspect is a Trinamool Congress worker.
Eyewitnesses claimed that the girl, along with her mother, was going to a nearby pond to take a bath in the Malandi village of Barochandgar area under Kaliganj police station when she was hit by a bomb hurled from a rally taken out to celebrate the TMC’s unassailable lead in the bypoll.
The rally participants, eyewitnesses further alleged, targeted residences of CPI(M) supporters in the area with socket bombs even as they passed and intensified bombings when resisted by the locals.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee declared that culprits will not be spared.
“I am shocked and deeply saddened at the death of a young girl in an explosion at Barochandgar. My prayers and thoughts are with the family in their hour of grief,” Banerjee posted on X.
“Police shall take strong and decisive legal action against the culprits at the earliest,” she added.
The police said raids were on to nab the remaining culprits and the situation was tense but under control.
“We shall spare no stones unturned to nab the culprits who were behind the incident. Raids are on in full swing to arrest those responsible for this extremely unfortunate death,” the state police posted on X.
Visiting the crime scene, Krishnanagar Police District SP K Amarnath said two groups attacked each other with bombs over a previous rivalry.
“There was a similar incident in 2023 and one of our officers was injured then. The girl died probably after she was hit by splinters of bombs,” he said.
The IPS officer said that forensic examination would confirm the type of bomb that exploded.
“The body was sent for post-mortem. We are probing into the cause of the explosion,” he said.
Meanwhile, TMC’s Alifa Ahmed bettered the 2021 winning margin of her father Nasiruddin Ahmed, whose death necessitated the bypoll to Kaliganj.
Alifa bagged 1,02,759 votes compared to BJP’s Ashish Ghosh who finished the race with 52,710 votes, according to ECI website.
The Left-supported Congress candidate Kabil Uddin Shaikh came third with 28,348 votes.
Voting which was held on Thursday remained by and large peaceful.
Alifa, a 38-year-old engineer, quit her corporate job at an IT firm in Kolkata to foray into politics and followed the footsteps of Mahua Moitra, the party’s MP from Krishnanagar under which the Kaligunj assembly segment falls, who chose the heat and dust of her Lok Sabha constituency and Parliament floor to voice her party’s political line over her previous profession as an investment banker.
Alifa attributed her victory to “people’s love” and thanked them for “reposing faith in Mamata Banerjee’s development politics”.
“I do not agree that Hindus have not voted for us, we received significant leads from some Hindu-majority areas in my constituency,” Alifa said in response to a claim from BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari.
“We did not target votes from any particular community. We approached all voters and the results show that their clear mandate is not to tolerate any form of communal divide in Bengal,” she added.
Long before the official announcement of the results, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee congratulated the people of Kaliganj and expressed her gratitude to them.
“People of all religions, castes, races and walks of life in the area have blessed us immensely by exercising their right to vote in the by-elections to the Kaliganj Assembly constituency. I humbly express my gratitude to them. The main architects of this victory are ‘Maa, Mati, and Manush’. My colleagues from Kaliganj have worked tirelessly for this,” she said in a post on her X handle.
“Remembering the late MLA Nasiruddin Ahmed, I dedicate this victory to the motherland and people of Bengal,” she added.
The BJP, though, felt that the party had significant takeaways from the results and had not returned empty-handed.
“We have been able to reap the benefits of assimilating Hindu votes in the region. The effort has paid off since we have received an overwhelming majority of votes from Hindu-dominated areas like Palassey,” said Adhikari.
Congress candidate Kabil Uddin Sheikh pointed fingers at the BJP for what he felt about the results showing “a clear reflection of religious polarisation”.
“Between Suvendu Adhikari and Sukanta Majumdar, the BJP had conducted four meetings in Kaliganj where they unambiguously called the Hindu voters to unite or else face obliteration. Faced with that call, the minorities joined forces as well and voted for TMC. The BJP and the TMC ensured together that votes were divided among communal lines,” Sheikh alleged.