India, Feb. 12 -- Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday alleged a 24-year-old migrant worker from West Bengal's Purulia district was murdered in Maharashtra's Pune on Tuesday because he was a Bengali. She called it a hate crime.

"I am shaken, enraged, and sickened beyond words by the barbaric murder of Sukhen Mahato, a 24-year-old migrant worker from Bandwan in Purulia, the sole earning member of his family, in Pune, Maharashtra," Banerjee wrote on X.

"This is nothing short of a hate crime. A young man was hunted, tortured, and murdered for his language, his identity, his roots. This is the direct consequence of a climate where xenophobia is weaponised, and innocents are turned into targets."

The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) sh...