Members of a leftist students group from Jadavpur University damaged a stone bust of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee in Kolkata on Wednesday morning. Six persons, including a woman, have been taken into custody by the police.
In a video accessed by The Hindu, many students are seen reaching the Keoratala crematorium in south Kolkata with hammer and paint. At least three of them climbed up the platform on which the bust was placed and started hammering at it. Others painted the face of the statue black.
They raised slogans demanding answer from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government on why the statues of Periyar and Lenin have been damaged.
“Periyar, Lenin, Ambedkar-er murti bhanga holo keno, BJP sarkar jobab dao.” (We are asking BJP government why Periyar, Ambedkar and Lenin's statues were vandalised.)
The development comes a day after Vladimir Lenin's statue was pulled down in Agartala and social reformer Periyar E.V. Ramasamy’s statue was vandalised in Tiruppattur, Tamil Nadu.
Locals said that the students partially damaged the ear and the nose of the Mookerjee statue. Some of the local residents objected to the action. Mookerjee founded Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of BJP, in the early 1950s.
Condemning the incident, State BJP general secretary Sayantan Basu said in a statement, “we demand very strong action against the culprits...We will rebuild it with more grace.”
BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha also reacted to the incident. “Whenever the Left goes out of power they take up such tricks.The communists are anti-nationals,” he told PTI.
