New Persona

When election season arrives in West Bengal, so does the violence.

And this violence is dominated by crude bombs. Homemade explosives packed with shrapnel. Children pick them up, mistaking them for toys. Some breaking news coming in. We're learning that a minor has been killed in an explosion. In fact, children, we believe, were playing in that area when the bomb hit. There is no publicly available data on crude bomb child casualties in West Bengal.

So the BBC went through the archives of two Bengali newspapers since 1996, unearthing reports of 565 children killed, maimed or injured. On average, one child every 18 days. Cases do go unreported, so the actual number is likely to be higher. 14-year-old Sabina sits on a wooden stool outside her home. She cradles a small black coat on her lap.

Her midnight blue headscarf hides what's left of her right arm. I had taken my goat to the garden, she says, describing how she saw a ball under a tree. She started playing with it, and that's when the explosion happened. Amina Bibi is Sabina's mother. My daughter kept trying, saying she would never get her hand back. I kept consoling her, but she kept on crying.

Crude bombs were first used by revolutionaries in West Bengal in the early 1900s to fight the British. They gradually became an accepted feature of the state's politics, most notably in the 1960s as Maoist rebels fought for control of the state. Since then, bomb-making skills have been passed down the generations. Pankaj Datta is West Bengal's former Inspector General of Police.

He passed away last month.

In the middle of the 2024 general election, another West Bengal family mourns a child killed by a crude bomb. My son is gone, cries the mother of Raj Biswas. The nine-year-old was playing when he found the explosives. The BBC asked West Bengal's four main political parties whether they commissioned crude bombs for electoral gain.

The Communist Party of India Marxist and the Indian National Congress strongly denied doing so. The All India Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janta Party did not respond.

As family and friends lay Raj to rest, chanting from a political rally can be heard in the wind. Hail Bengal, the crowd shouts. Hail Bengal.