NEW DELHI: A day after the Delhi Police dismissed a viral video shared by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as “baseless and fabricated,” the Trinamool Congress (TMC) presented the migrant family featured in the video at its Kolkata office on Monday to counter the narrative.
The family, originally from Malda and residing in Delhi for over two decades, appeared at a press conference alongside TMC leaders including MPs Mausam Noor and Samirul Islam, Minister Firhad Hakim, and spokesperson Kunal Ghosh. The woman in the video, Sajnur Parveen, accused the Delhi Police of harassment, abuse, and extortion.
“Four men in plain clothes came asking for my Aadhaar and my husband’s whereabouts. I was called Bangladeshi, slapped, kicked in the stomach, and asked to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram.’ They demanded Rs 25,000, and the next day, we were picked up, tortured, and forced to sign documents,” she said.
On July 27, Banerjee had shared CCTV footage allegedly showing the incident, accusing Delhi Police of unleashing “linguistic terror” on Bengali-speaking migrants. “Even a child is not spared. Where are they taking our country?” she posted on social media.
However, Delhi Police DCP (east) Abhishek Dhania refuted the charges, calling the video misleading. He said Parveen had initially claimed that four impersonators had extorted money from her.
But further investigation and questioning allegedly revealed that she was asked to make the video by a relative affiliated with a political party in Malda. “The woman confessed to staging the clip,” Dhania said, adding that the video had first circulated locally in Bengal before gaining traction online.