A year following the arson during the protests over the Waqf law in Murshidabad, the home of Harogobindo Das and his son Chandan, who were killed by a mob, still resembles a bunker.
The walls bear black marks, and broken bricks are strewn near the staircase. A central police camp is situated just a few feet away, yet inside the house, discussions of safety are absent.
In Jafrabad, a Hindu-majority village surrounded by Muslim-dominated areas in Samserganj, the violence of 2025 is no longer a mere memory. It has evolved into a political narrative ahead of the 2026 assembly elections.
The names of Harogobindo and Chandan are now articulated in the same breath as Nandigram or Sandeshkhali, not just as a tragedy, but as a cautionary tale, a rallying cry, and an indictment.
“We are being remembered because elections are approaching,” stated Parul Das, the widow of Harogobindo and mother of Chandan, as she sat at the entrance of the house where the mob had invaded on April 12, 2025.
“They dragged my husband and son out and killed them like animals. Neither of them did anything wrong. I alerted the police, the MLA, everyone. No one responded,” she recounted to PTI.
Parul mentioned that she declined compensation from the state government.
“What would I do with the money? Can it bring them back? The TMC government cannot deliver justice to us. Suvendu Adhikari visited, but none others stood with us,” she asserted.
Her voting decision, she stated, is no longer concerned with infrastructure, rations, or Lakshmir Bhandar.
“My vote is for security. I want a permanent central police camp in the village; without it, we will not endure. Once the elections conclude and the forces depart, they will return.” Upstairs, Chandan’s sister-in-law Sathi Das still cannot sleep alone.
That afternoon, she recalled hearing shouting from the street, followed by the sound of explosions.
“I was with my children. My mother-in-law screamed that intruders had entered the house. We rushed to the roof. Later, we escaped through another exit. My husband was in Coimbatore, and my brother-in-law and father-in-law were taken. We couldn’t save them,” she shared.
Her husband Samartha was in Coimbatore when Chandan contacted him.
“My brother informed me of the mob’s attack. I tried reaching the police station, the MLA, and the panchayat leader. No one answered. Eventually, I learned that my father and brother had been brutally murdered,” he revealed.
Samartha has now returned to Jafrabad for good, unwilling to leave his family unattended.
In December, a court sentenced 13 men to life imprisonment over the incident, but the family claims the verdict did little to quell their fears.
In Jafrabad, fear looms like humidity. Numerous houses remain locked, and some families have relocated their daughters to relatives in Malda and Birbhum. Children stop playing after sunset, and women refrain from venturing out alone after dark.
Seventy-year-old Bharat Das recounted that villagers attempted to resist the mob’s entry. “But how long can mere sticks combat bombs? They had crude bombs, firearms—everything. We were outnumbered,” he lamented.
The village, he noted, no longer believes in its own geography. “We are encircled from all sides. Previously, our Muslim neighbors engaged with us. Now, everyone isolates themselves. There is silence, yet no peace,” he said.
In Samserganj, where Muslims constitute nearly 80% of the electorate, Jafrabad acts as a small enclave of Hindu votes. During the Special Intensive Revision, around 92,000 names were removed from the electoral rolls, primarily Muslims, drastically lowering the electorate.
The BJP contends that this correction has unveiled years of demographic transformation. The TMC labels it disenfranchisement.
The political landscape of Jafrabad now rests firmly on this fault line. BJP candidate Shashti Charan Das asserted that the killings of Harogobindo and Chandan demonstrate that Hindus are unsafe under TMC governance.
“This occurred because the administration capitulated to radical factions. Minority appeasement has eroded law and order. Jafrabad stands as the greatest symbol of that failure,” he claimed.
TMC candidate Noor Alam accuses the BJP of exploiting a family’s grief for electoral gain.
“It was an unfortunate event. Justice has been served to the guilty. However, the BJP seeks riots prior to every election. They are leveraging deceased individuals to polarize Bengal,” he alleged.
Congress candidate Nazme Alam stated that both the TMC and BJP are profiting from fear.
“The state government failed to safeguard these citizens. Yet, the BJP is utilizing their suffering to further divide Hindus and Muslims. Ordinary villagers find themselves caught between the two,” he declared.
Nevertheless, in Jafrabad, political discourse continually circles back to the same staircase, the same shattered courtyard, the same house with the iron gate.
This is why Jafrabad has come to represent more than itself.
In a constituency where the TMC has held a solid majority since 2016, where Amirul Islam has been replaced this year by Noor Alam, and where the Congress still maintains remnants of influence, upcoming elections are no longer debated in terms of infrastructure, jobs, or development.
Here, people recount the stories of those who arrived after the tragedies, those who picked up the phone, those who crossed the street, and those who failed to do so.
The village has become a microcosm of Bengal: grief transformed into politics, fear reformulated into identity, and an election distilled into a singular, pressing question—who will protect us when the forces depart? Amid the BJP’s discourse of Hindu insecurity, the TMC’s accusations of polarization, and the Congress’s warnings against both, Jafrabad now occupies the intersection of Bengal’s profound fault lines.
When Samserganj votes on April 23 in the first phase of the West Bengal assembly elections, Jafrabad will not merely be choosing between parties or candidates. It will cast its vote with the poignant memories of a shattered door, lifeless bodies outside the house, unanswered phone calls, and the looming dread that the next knock may again come bearing bombs and weapons.
The second phase of polling is scheduled for April 29, with the counting of votes on May 4.
