51-year-old East Bardhaman migrant labour from dies unnaturally, family blames SIR panic

In the quiet village of Nabagram in East Bardhaman's Jamalpur, grief hangs heavy as the body of 51-year-old Bimal Santara returned home yesterday evening, shrouded in mystery and heartbreak. A migrant laborer who left for Tamil Nadu just days earlier to harvest paddy/crops, his sudden death has ignited fierce debate. Admitted to a local Tamil Nadu hospital on October 26 after falling gravely ill, he passed away on Thursday during treatment, prompting his son Bapi to rush there and file an unnatural death report at Orathanadu police station in Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu What makes this tragedy particularly poignant is the family's chilling allegation: Bimal's anxiety over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists—fearing his name might vanish from the rolls—pushed him into a spiral of worry that directly led to his collapse.

His son Bapi Santra recounts how, upon hearing SIR announcements, Bimal became tensed and worried, repeatedly voicing fears about whether his name should be present in the voter list amid SIR process. Local Trinamool Congress leaders, including Jamalpur MLA Alok Majhi, swiftly visited the family, claims the death as a direct fallout of SIR-induced panic. State minister Swapan Debnath went further, labeling it another suicide orchestrated by Election Commission fearmongering. They offered condolences and vowed support, highlighting how such revisions exacerbate vulnerabilities for migrants already stretched thin by economic woes.

Yet, the narrative isn't unanimous. BJP's Jamalpur-1 Mandal President Pradhan Chandra Pal dismissed the SIR link outright, calling it a desperate Trinamool ploy amid electoral jitters. This incident isn't isolated; it follows a string of alleged SIR-related tragedies, from Pradeep Kar's suicide in Panihati with a note citing the revision, to Khairul Sheikh's poison attempt in Cooch Behar and Kshitish Majumdar's hanging to death in Birbhum due to his absence from the 2002 rolls followed by an indident in Titagarh Barracckpore where a woman put herself on fire and died a few days back.