Death, live on FB: How mob justice drove three of a family to suicide

On the morning of January 9, at 10:35am, a 25-year- old man went live on Facebook from a coastal village in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district. His hair was unkempt, eyes haggard, and voice shaking. In Bengali, he launched into a defence of his “didi” (elder sister).

“My sister is innocent. She has not stolen any money. They have locked up our home. We are homeless. We have no option but to die. We have met many people and the police. Nobody helped us. They said we have to settle the accounts with the bank.... Police will recover my mobile phone. All documents, audio calls and voice records are saved in it,” the man in the video said.

His voice grew ever more frantic, and the allegations starker. “Why didn’t the people of Sultanpur lodge a police complaint earlier? They should be punished for this. They are wrongly suspecting a woman and torturing her…They tortured my sister by shoving a stick in her private parts. Please save her and my brother-in-law. Share this video,” the man said.

In the video, as the man spoke, a phone rang intermittently in the background, but he refused to pay heed. At 11am, 25 minutes after he had started the Facebook live, he placed his handset on the ground, as his father, aged 63, and his mother, in her late forties, walked into the frame. The three then embraced, breaking down in tears. Minutes later, one after another, they climbed onto the branch of the tree behind them, and hanged themselves.

His last words in the video were, “We are dying, but let them (sister and brother-in-law) have justice.” When the police found the bodies, his phone was found resting against the stump of a tree. The family had captured their own deaths by suicide.

What happened before

The family of three lived in South 24 Paraganas, and left early on Sunday morning for a spot on the Bakkhali beach where they committed the act, police said. But their pain and humiliation stemmed from a series of events months in the making, culminating in a mob beating, at the centre of which was the 25-year-old’s sister.

The family belonged to a lower caste community which was dominant in the village.

The man and his father did odd jobs to run the family, police officers said.

For several months, police said, people in the village where the man’s sister and husband stay, also in the South 24 Paraganas district, have been accusing her of siphoning off around ₹10 lakh raised by members of a self-help group, (SHG) run by local women. Her husband works as a labourer at construction sites.

The SHG has 12 members and is involved in raising funds for business projects for local women through a micro-financing scheme. The man’s sister, who heads the SHG, was accused by her colleagues of stealing the money they gave to her as a corpus fund. These allegations started in November 2021. The 28-year-old woman has consistently denied these charges, claiming that she deposited the money in the bank account that the SHG holds with the local branch of the Indian Bank.

Puja Das, one of the members of the SHG, told HT, “When we charged the man’s sister with stealing our money she said she would return it. She was part of other SHGs as well.”

The district has several SHGs, which, also encouraged by the government, have been set up to provide employment to local women and develop skills in making handicrafts and food items, among other things. The groups also help these groups market their products.

Goutam Mitra, the officer-in-charge of Diamond Harbour police station, told HT that a preliminary probe by his officers has revealed that money from the bank account is missing. “The man’s sister claimed that she has receipts issued by the bank, but the bank says that those receipts are forged. The local community block development officer (BDO) initiated a probe into this a couple of months ago since SHGs are under his jurisdiction,” Mitra said.

The ‘instant justice’

On the afternoon of January 8, the day before the mass suicide, another video did the rounds of the area, shot by residents of the village where the 28-year-old woman and her husband live. The video showed the two tied with ropes and being paraded on the streets. Locals have also alleged that the couple were tied to a lamp post and beaten with a stick, after which they were paraded to her parental home in another village a kilometre away.

“These women stormed the family’s home on Saturday. It is alleged that they tortured the youth’s sister although she pleaded for mercy. A police team reached the spot and dispersed the mob,” said a district police officer.

Locals said that an angry mob went to the house of the woman, and dragged the couple out. They were assaulted, tied up and paraded. Threats were issued that if they did not return the money, their home would be forcibly “taken over”. One of the women and her husband, who allegedly led the assault, were arrested on Tuesday.

Police officials said that the investigation had already started before the family died by suicide. But even as arrests were being made, the authorities received word, that the 28-year-old’s brother and parents killed themselves. Mitra said that though the woman’s brother had alleged sexual assault in the live video, this has not been borne out by investigation thus far. “A medical test was done on the woman. It did not show any such evidence,” Mitra said on Tuesday afternoon.

Puja Das, the member of the SHG group maintained that while people did go to the woman’s home on Saturday to confront her, there was no assault.

Police investigation

The police have arrested seven people, including six women, in the case, based on a complaint of Saturday’s events by the 28-year-old woman. “All the accused have been remanded to police custody. The accused have been charged under several sections of the Indian Penal Code including Section 307 (attempt to murder). Though the young man’s sister has been accused of defalcating funds, the police have not filed any case against her because the BDO is probing the complaint. The BDO will decide whether charges should be brought against the bank or the woman,” Mitra said.

Diamond Harbour’s superintendent of police, Avijit Banerjee, said that some more people are under the scanner for alleged financial irregularities. “The man’s sister has also named an officer of the bank as a suspect. We will question everyone,” Banerjee said.

On Monday, Bhaskar Mukherjee, superintendent of police, Sunderbans police district, in whose jurisdictional area the suicides took place, told HT that his department is conducting a parallel probe and a case of abetment to suicide has been registered.

“The five women arrested by Diamond Harbour police station have been named in the case filed by us. There are several other suspects. The fact that probes are being conducted by two police districts will not hinder the judicial outcome of any of these cases,” said Mukherjee.

The block development officer, Milan Tirtha Samanta, could not be contacted despite several efforts.

The incident has led a controversy on social media.

Rajya Sabha member Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said, “These suicides should be seen a planned social murders. The incident shows how the state government’s loan-dependent policies have also made people dependent on loans.”