Mookerjee’s bust vandalised in Kolkata

As an unseemly fallout of the BJP’s historic triumph in the Left bastion of Tripura, suspected right-wing activists had pull down two statues of Lenin at different places in the tiny north-eastern state. 

On Wednesday, seven people belonging to a Left-leaning group called ‘Radical’ vandalised the bust of Mookerjee in south Kolkata. All the seven, including a woman, were arrested, Kolkata police commissioner Rajiv Kumar said. 

The incidents of Tripura were followed by desecration of a bust of revered Dravidian movement founder E V Ramasamy Periyar in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore after a Facebook post by a senior BJP leader. 

The incident triggered widespread protests across the state on Wednesday. The spate of desecration of statues and busts of reformers and political legends prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to strongly condemn such incidents. 

A statue of Dalit icon BR Ambedkar was vandalised and replaced later in Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh, amid an ongoing spate of incidents targeting statues and busts of known figures across the country. Following the incident, members of the Dalit community here blocked the Meerut-Mawana road even as the administrative officials sought to calm down the protesters and assured them that the vandalised statue would be replaced with a new one. The officials later said that a new Ambedkar statue had been installed.