At ground zero, public glare on 16-sq-ft stall that sparked clash

Time of India

a day ago

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Kolkata: A one-ft-tall tulsi sapling, planted at the site of a 16-sq-ft fruit stall, barely metres from the Rabindranagar Police Station, was at the root of the violence at Santoshpur-Akra in Maheshtala that continued for over six hours on Wednesday.
The sapling was planted by a group of youths—regular faces at the 'Shubh Mangalbar Aarti' at a Bajrangbali temple beside the police station. They put up a small tulsi platform at the site nearly four days earlier and started offering prayers there. At this very spot, a fruit seller had his shop for years. Some residents of the area claimed the fruit shop had been shut for a couple of days for Eid and that the tulsi sapling was planted during this time.
On returning, when the fruit seller discovered the plant, he and his wife reportedly reached out to some community elders and complained about it.
The youths who had planted the tulsi, however, denied the allegation. "That is not true. When we were planting the sapling, he was standing nearby. But he later decided to create a false narrative and said he was being forced to chant 'Jay Shree Ram'. Unfortunately, the elders believed him without cross-checking the facts," said Shivam Mahato, a worker at the local municipality.
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Mahato lives in a bustee, 200m from the police station.
"I was present there when they were planting the sapling. Harimohan and Rahul took the initiative, and all of us helped them."
Trouble broke out on Wednesday with a group of residents staging a protest by hurling bricks near the police station. Within minutes, a crowd gathered near the Bajrangbali temple, located on Santoshpur Road, which is lined with grocery stores, pharmacy stores, mobile shops, builders' offices, roadside eateries and two schools.
The Akra-Santoshpur area has a mixed population, most of the minority community members being engaged in textile and garment-related trades.
The situation had soon escalated with police resorting to lathicharge and firing tear gas shells. Multiple cops were injured and several vehicles were damaged.
"We stay in a locality, where Hindus and Muslims have been living in harmony for decades. I was married into a neighbourhood, where most people were Hindus.
But I never felt anything strange. Those who orchestrated the attacks on Wednesday were mindless hooligans, who belong to no community," said Tarannum Begum, who has been living in the area for more than three decades. Tarannum and her husband run a small eatery, which has not opened since Wednesday.
"That shop is our only source of income. We don't know when life will return to normalcy."
On both sides of Santoshpur Road, which leads to the Kankhuly area, indiscriminate attacks on homes and shops were evident.
Bricks, which were used as "weapons" during the clash that had engulfed the area a day earlier, lay on the ground. Sk Akbar runs a barber's shop on the ground floor of an apartment near Bidhangar, Santoshpur area. In front of his shop, a number of cars, with broken windshields, were parked. "Teenagers and even children carried bricks in their hands.
They pelted every building in the area and passing vehicles with those bricks.
I feared for the residents who were desperately looking for help and stayed locked up inside their homes," Akbar said. For the next half an hour, Akbar and Shyamal Chakraborty—owner of a restaurant opposite Akbar's shop—stood on the road, pleading with the crowds not to attack anyone.
On Thursday morning, residents' groups held meetings among themselves. "We are yet to figure out how all these things happened. The episode over a tiny tulsi plant attempted to shatter the trust we built over decades," said Arup Adhikari, a resident of a housing society in the area.
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