Kolkata, Nov. 6 -- "Fear of being erased from the state's records, fear of being declared invisible in his own homeland. That fear did not appear overnight. It was manufactured, distributed, and sustained by BJP's politics of fear," Trinamool Congress (TMC) said in a strong statement after the occurrence of another death allegedly related to Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
According to reports, Tarak Saha (54), a resident of Baharampur in Murshidabad, ended his life out of fear surrounding the SIR process. Locals said Tarak, a small shopkeeper and lifelong resident of Bengal, had grown increasingly anxious in recent days, terrified that his name might be removed from the voter list. Family members said he had repeatedly expressed worry that he would be treated as an outsider in his own homeland.
On Thursday morning, Tarak was found hanged in his room. His wife, Priya Saha, said he had spent the previous night distraught, speaking of how he lacked the documents officials were reportedly demanding during the revision process. "He kept saying he didn't have the right papers. He was scared they would erase his name," she recalled with tears. This tragic incident has reignited the controversy surrounding the SIR exercise, which TMC has condemned as "silent invisible rigging". They allege that the BJP-led Centre has turned a routine administrative process into a weapon of intimidation, spreading confusion and domination through doubt.
Police have recovered the body and sent it for forensic examination.
A senior police official stated: "We are investigating the reason behind it."
With this, the death toll reaches 10. TMC posted in their official handle: "The Centre must answer: how many more lives before this politics of fear is called what it truly is, a war against India's own citizens?"
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.