In the wake of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's accusations of "linguistic terror" against Bengali speakers, the Delhi Police have refuted the claims, branding them as "fabricated and baseless". Banerjee's allegations stemmed from a video she shared on social media platform X, purportedly showing a Bengali migrant worker's family, including a child and mother, being assaulted by Delhi Police. The BJP has also responded, dismissing Banerjee's accusations as "cheap propaganda".
Banerjee's initial post on X expressed outrage, stating, "Atrocious!! Terrible!! See how Delhi Police brutally beat up a kid and his mother, members of a migrant family from Malda's Chanchal. See how even a child is not spared from the cruelty of violence in the regime of linguistic terror unleashed by the BJP in the country against the Bengalis!". She questioned the direction in which the country was headed.
The Delhi Police, however, have presented a different account. According to DCP East Delhi, Abhishek Dhania, the police took immediate cognizance of the video and launched an inquiry. Their investigation revealed the woman in the video to be Sanjanu Parveen. During questioning, Parveen initially claimed that on July 26th, individuals in civilian clothes who identified themselves as policemen took her and her family to a secluded area, assaulted them, and demanded 25,000 Rupees, which she says they paid.
However, further investigation led the Delhi Police to conclude that Parveen's story was "baseless". They claim that Parveen admitted to making the video at the request of a relative from the Malda district of West Bengal, who is allegedly a political worker. The police say she then shared the video with this relative, who circulated it in local Bengali media.
The BJP has strongly criticized Banerjee's accusations. The party's IT cell head, Amit Malviya, has accused her of "lying" and asserted that those being questioned are illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, who may speak Bengali but are not Indian citizens. He further accused Banerjee of being a "disgrace" for equating Indian citizens from West Bengal with illegal migrants from Bangladesh, merely because they happen to be Trinamool Congress voters. BJP leader Mithun Chakraborty has also dismissed Banerjee's claims as "baseless," accusing her of spreading fear for political gain and attempting to monopolize the Bengali identity discourse.
Banerjee's accusations coincide with the Trinamool Congress launching "Bhasha Andolan," a campaign against the alleged harassment of Bengali-speaking persons in BJP-ruled states. Banerjee announced the protest at the party's annual Martyrs' Day rally in Kolkata on July 21, stating that the fight to protect the Bengali language and identity would continue until the BJP was voted out. She has also alleged that the Election Commission is conspiring against Bengal and wants to remove Bengalis from the voter list.
These events occur against a backdrop of increasing political friction between the TMC and the BJP, particularly with the 2026 West Bengal assembly elections approaching. Banerjee has consistently raised the issue of harassment of Bengalis in BJP-ruled states, accusing the BJP of carrying out atrocities on migrant workers from Bengal. She has also claimed that the central government and Election Commission are attempting to implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC) through the "backdoor" by targeting Bengali-speaking migrants. Conversely, the BJP accuses the TMC of fear-mongering and diverting attention from governance issues.
