A 27-year-old Muslim student was brutally assaulted by a group of Hindutva men on a train in West Bengal accusing him of being Bangladeshi.
The victim, Rezaul Islam Mondal, a final-year M.Tech student from Aliah University was returning from the Bishwa Ijtema religious gathering in Bangladesh with friends when the incident occurred on a train from Gede station to Sealdah. The attackers beat him, pulled his beard, and threatened to throw him off the train.
The altercation began when a passenger asked Mondal to remove his trolley bag from the luggage rack. Despite complying, a group of men attempted to force him out of his seat, hurling communal slurs and calling him a Bangladeshi. For nearly an hour, a dozen people attacked Mondal, despite his repeated claims of being an Indian citizen. He was punched, kicked, and had his skullcap removed. Some attackers even encouraged others to throw him off the moving train.
