SIR panic claims another life! Howrah labourer commits suicide

A  young contract labourer died by suicide in a tragic incident in Uluberia, Howrah. The death is being linked to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls. The TMC has vehemently claimed that the 28-year-old, identified as Jahir Mal, took the extreme step due to overwhelming anxiety that the SIR process.

This latest incident marks the fifth death in the state that the TMC attributes to the panic created by the voter list review. Jahir Mal, a resident of Khalisani village, was a daily wage worker. While the Uluberia police recovered his body from his home on Tuesday morning, they did not find any suicide note.

However, his wife, Rezina Bibi, stated that Jahir had been gripped by fear over the SIR. "He was in a panic about SIR. He constantly said they would send him to Bangladesh. This fear was working on his mind for the last few days. He killed himself out of fear," she claimed.

State Minister Pulak Ray, after meeting the family, directly accused the central government of creating a "politics of death," stating that an atmosphere of terror has been deliberately manufactured where simply speaking in Bengali is being equated with being a Bangladeshi.

BJP MP and Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar claimed that it is the TMC that is deliberately misleading the general populace and attempting to exploit human tragedy for political gain. He asserted that the Trinamool Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee, is trying to fulfill its political agenda by instilling fear in the name of SIR, even though the process is a routine electoral exercise.