Bengal police are urging people to ignore rumours about dacoits and molesters around the state.
The West Bengal police are going around the villages and towns with mikes urging people to ignore rumours about dacoits, child lifters and molesters that have spread in the state which resulted in mobs lynching two men and brutally beating up two women, one of them a 70-year-old NRI. Twenty-five people have been arrested so far, one of them was a class 12 student who had some suspicious social media posts on his phone.
The Director General of Police held a rare press meet in Kolkata to address the grim situation in the state. Surajit Kar Purakayasta, DGP West Bengal, said, "There have been some instances where some rumours are spreading that some people masked in black cloth and all are coming in certain areas either for the sake of causing robbery or molestation or child lifting. We are going to take strict actions against those mischief mongers."
Mischievous posts circulating for at least a fortnight led to trouble on Saturday when a bus was set ablaze at Nadia district after a local resident was lynched by a mob in Burdwan on the suspicion of being a child lifter. On the same day, a beggar was lynched at Palta, 20 km from Kolkata airport.
A woman and her NRI mother, were also robbed, thrashed, molested and almost burnt alive in their car on Saturday when they asked for directions in Hooghly, 36 km from Kolkata.
Aparna Ghosh, a school teacher at a school at Kalyani in Nadia district, said, "When we were in the car, they were about to set it on fire, the police arrived on time, else they would have burnt us alive."
The Ghosh family were the victims of either mob fury or something more sinister. "People are in danger and I hope the Chief Minister will take action," said, Kaushik Ghosh, the girl's brother.