Child-kidnapping rumours trigger panic in Bengal towns after missing 11-year-old boy found dead

The alleged murder of an 11-year-old boy over a property dispute in the town of Barasat, about 25 km north of Kolkata, has fuelled completely unsubstantiated rumours of child kidnapping and organ trafficking on social media, resulting in widespread panic and violent vigilantism. At least five incidents of mob assault on innocent people have been reported in the last five days in areas adjoining Barasat in the North 24 Paragans district of West Bengal.

So far, 34 people have been arrested in connection with these cases, including four for false social media posts stoking rumours. “There has not been a single incident of child kidnapping in Barasat police district. All the claims viral on social media in this regard are false”, Barasat SP Pratiksha Jharkhariya told the press on June 19.

The rumours, however, keep spreading powered by Facebook posts. The SP told Alt News on Monday, June 24, that 55 such Facebook posts had been identified by police, of which 51 were taken down.

Missing 11-year-old Boy Found Dead

The decomposed body of an 11-year-old boy from Barasat’s Kajipara was found hanging inside a long-unused lavatory in a neighbour’s house on June 13, four days after he had gone missing. The preliminary autopsy report suggested that he had been strangled to death.

Barasat Police cracked the case in about a week and arrested the boy’s uncle, Enger Nabi, on June 20. According to police, Nabi confessed to killing the boy over a financial dispute with the latter’s father.

The accused had tried to mislead the cops several times. He had allegedly poured a red liquid on the walls of the neighbour’s house to give the impression that residents of the house had killed the boy. “A forensic team had collected samples from the walls of the neighbour’s house. It wasn’t human blood. He tried to mislead us several times. But his statements kept changing and we kept questioning him. He finally broke down and told us that he had killed the boy as an act of revenge,” Jharkhariya told The Telegraph.

The successful investigation, however, brought little relief for the cops as rumours of child kidnappers and organ traffickers on the prowl had already spread like wildfire.

The Rumours

According to SP Jharkhariya. the rumours were begun by Nabi himself when the boy had gone missing. He works as a muezzin in a local mosque and has considerable sway over the locals. On June 12, a day before the boy’s body was found, he told them that a woman child-lifter had been in the area. He also made an announcement on this using the mosque’s public address system and urged people to protest against child kidnappers.

Alt News spoke to a primary school teacher in Barasat who said that the rumours had begun transmitting orally but before long, someone made a Facebook post on this.

One post led to many and the social media rumour attained a life of its own. People also started forwarding WhatsApp texts warning each other against child lifters on the prowl.

After the child’s body was found, it added fuel to the fire. A disturbing image of the decomposed corpse started circulating. The school teacher said he had received a collage of two images on WhatsApp — the child’s photo and that of the body — with an appeal to share it as much as possible. “It was so graphic, I deleted it immediately,” he added.

Alt News accessed one such Facebook post which is now deleted. It contained a collage of photos of the 11-year-old boy and his decomposed body recovered by police. The post talked about the involvement of an organ trafficking racket in the Kajipara incident.

The post said: “The image on the right had side is taken before he went missing. The point is… Several children have gone missing in the last few days and they remain untraced. Only this kid has been found. Surprisingly, the big news channels are not showing this. I personally suspect that there is a big racket (mis-spelt in Bengali as racked) behind this, some big shots are involved because removing the kidney is not as easy task. Only experienced doctors can do that. Storing a kidney is not an easy task either…”

There are several schools in the 1 km radius of Kajipara. Once rumours spread to the WhatsApp groups of the parents of young students, they stopped sending their children to school. Triggered by the rumours, a woman was beaten up by locals in Chakdah, about 40km away, on June 10, on the suspicion of being a child-lifter. Visuals of the incident went viral on Facebook, some of which are still live.

A local news outlet named News 24 Bangla Live did a report on this describing the woman as the mastermind of the child kidnapping gang. Several users shared it on community Facebook pages.

On being informed about the incident, Barasat police officers went to Chakdah. The SP told Alt News, “The woman is a resident of Chakdah. We traced her whereabouts. She begs from door to door. We did a thorough check and found that she was not involved in any wrongdoing. She had no antecedent or criminal record.”

Trying to dispel the rumours, Barasat Police put out a video with SDPO Vidyagar Ajinkya Anant stating that the post-mortem surgeon had confirmed that no organ was missing from the child’s body and organ trafficking had nothing to do with the child’s ‘killing’.

Social media rumors allege a woman is involved in child and organ trafficking in Barasat. The medical officer confirmed after a child’s post-mortem that it’s not organ trafficking. Please don’t spread these false news.
#FakeNewsAlert #BarasatPoliceDistrict #WestBanegalPolice4U pic.twitter.com/awKwRMomFL

— Barasat District Police (@BarasatPolice) June 17, 2024

The video was also shared on Facebook. Police also shared a notice on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.

However, visuals of the incident went viral on Facebook with the false claim that the woman had kidnapped five children. Below are a few screenshots:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The user, Adhara Purkayastha, is an actor-influencer with a large following. She later shared another post apologizing for her earlier post and acknowledging that the news of child theft was fake.

All of the above posts carried the same image which contained the name Injamul Haque. Police told Alt News that Haque was the first person who shared posts regarding child kidnapping and organ trafficking on social media.

We traced his X handle (@InjamulOfficial) where most of his posts contained the same name art as the one in the Facebook post. On X, Haque mostly shared news updates related to Bengal and the Trinamool Congress. He also attacked the BJP on various issues.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

His Facebook page has either been deleted or made private.

Four Facebook Users Arrested

In a rare move, police arrested four persons in connection with false social media posts fueling rumours about child kidnapping. They were identified as Pritam Mistry, Abdul Karim Khan, Payel Talukdar and Sheikh Mijanur Rehman.

Barasat Additional SP Sparsha Nialngi told Alt News that in the suo motu case that was initially registered, they had been charged under IPC 505 and 506. However, while interrogating the people arrested for mob assault, it came to light that these four were names came up as instigators of the violence. “Their names have been added to the case related to the assaults,” she said.

“As administrators of Facebook pages, or as individual users, they were posting stuff, particularly videos, and spreading rumours that a gang of child kidnappers was on the prowl in Barasat. When we commented under those posts from the official handle, they took down our comments to ensure that the rumours did not stop,” Jharkhariya told Alt News.

Asked why there had been no action against Injamul Haque, Addl. SP Nilangi said, “Injamul Haque is not a resident of Barasat. He’s from Barrackpore. When we contacted him and informed him that it’s fake news, he deleted it. This was on June 18 when no assault incident had occurred (other than the one he posted aboout). He deleted it on the 18th itself. On the 19th, when two incidents of happened, we noticed some social media groups or pages related to Barasat posted the same fake news. When we tried to contact them and asked to take down posts, they did not take them down. Besides, since they’re from Barasat, local people saw their posts and reacted by assaulting others.”

Vigilantism Results in Mob Assaults in Adjoining Towns

Several incidents of mob assault on innocent people based on rumours of child kidnapping were reported in a span of five days.

On June 19, two incidents were reported in Barasat. In Mollapara, a man was thrashed by locals.

On the same day, a man and a woman were assaulted near the Central Modern School while boarding an auto-rickshaw. When police intervened, the mob ran riot and damaged police vehicles. The two victims were hospitalized.

Local councilor Sameer Talukder told Anandabazaar Patrika, “There is no basis to the rumours. Poeple are being beaten up just on suspicion. Two persons were severely badly beaten up till they were bleeding profusely. Some social media users are making unverified news about child kidnapping viral. Police are taking action against them. They are spreading the panic.”

On June 21, a woman named Rajani Khatun was assaulted in Ashok Nagar. An SI of police got injured in the clash when police tried to rescue her from the mob. On the following day, a man named Nazir Hussain was beaten up at an Eid fair in Mohanpur under Ranaghat PS area.

On the 24th, another incident was reported from Thakurpalli, Bangaon. Locals thrashed a vagabond on the suspicion of child kidnapping. He was rescued by police and admitted to the sub-divisional hospital.

‘Stunned by Criminality, Mob Mentality’

“These assaults were the direct outcome of baseless social media posts. We traced 55 such posts and tried to reach out to the users one by one. Most of these are now deleted. Some of these were posted on coummunity pages like ‘Amar Sahar Barasat’ and ‘Barasat Online’ with 80 to 90,000 followers. We found that people from Barasat living abroad had also shared them without trying to verify their authenticity,” Jharkhariya told Alt News.

“Wherever an unknown face is seen, if he/she looks suspicious, people are tagging him as a child-lifter. In most cases, these people are vagabonds, drug addicts and beggars. In one instance, the person was mentally unstable. They were all beaten up. The violent vigilantism has reached a monstrous proportion,” she added.

The IPS officer said she was stunned by the propensity of people to turn violent. “As if, they did it for fun. It is an eye-opener for us as law enforcers. In a Dattapukur incident, everyone knew the victim as a vagabond living near the rail station for six to seven years. Still she was attacked. The criminality was always there inside. Once the rumours spread, it found an avenue to erupt.”

Related