For 3 decades, children in West Bengal have been killed and maimed by political crude bombs

Children of the Bombs, the BBC documentary directed by Ronny Sen, reviewed newspaper reports to claim that 565 children have been killed, injured, or maimed between 1996 and 2024.

A child victim of a crude bomb explosion in West Bengal | Screengrab from BBC documentary 'Children of the Bombs'

Poulami Halder was seven years old when a crude bomb exploded in her hand, maiming her for life. She had gone to pluck flowers for a puja at home when she picked up what looked like a ball lying near her neighbour’s hand pump. She carried it home, where her grandfather screamed at her to throw it away, saying it was a bomb. “But it burst in Poulami’s hand,” her grandmother recalled for a BBC Eye documentary on West Bengal’s culture of crude bombs.

Used by political parties for election violence, these homemade bombs have maimed and killed many children in West Bengal. Often, these bombs—thrown by political rivals at one another—do not explode and are later picked up by children playing cricket or other games.

Children of the Bombs, the BBC documentary directed by Ronny Sen, reviewed newspaper reports from Anandabazar Patrika and Bartaman Patrika to claim that 565 children have been killed, injured, or maimed between 1996 and 2024. This means, on average, one child casualty every 18 days—and there is no end in sight to the menace.

Children caught in political violence

The BBC documentary shows that it is mostly children who suffer from these crude bombs—which could be lying anywhere in West Bengal’s villages, in open fields, playgrounds, or near houses, forgotten by those who carried them. Like Poulami, Sabeena’s life changed in 2020 when she picked up a bomb thinking it was a ball—and lost her hand. Sabeena was 10 years old at the time. She has been using a prosthetic hand since then, but she finds it “too heavy”. “It is useless,” she said. Her eyes were also affected in the blast, and she needs another operation; however, her parents are too poor to afford it.

Screengrab from BBC documentary ‘Children of the Bombs’

In the documentary, Pankaj Dutta, the former Inspector General of West Bengal Police, said that it is rather easy to find the materials to make these crude bombs—and also people willing to make them. Dutta also noted that this is not a new phenomenon in Bengal, as bombs were first made to target British officers during the armed revolution to free India from colonial rule. It dates back to 30 April 1908, when revolutionaries Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at the carriage of the Chief Presidency Magistrate, Douglas Kingsford, of Calcutta in the Muzaffarpur district—then under Bengal Presidency. It killed two women.

The documentary then shifts its focus to the Muraripukur Garden House in North Kolkata’s Maniktala area, which was once a secret hub where armed revolutionaries manufactured bombs and firearms. The garden house, once frequented by legendary figures like Barin Ghosh and Aurobindo Ghose (later known as Sri Aurobindo), is today, ironically, a children’s park.

• Children as Victims: The BBC documentary Children of the Bombs highlights how crude bombs used in West Bengal’s political violence have maimed and killed 565 children since 1996.
• A Political Culture of Violence: Homemade bombs, originally used in India’s independence struggle, have become weapons in modern political rivalries, frequently injuring innocent bystanders.
• Class and Caste Divide: The victims of crude bomb violence are largely poor children, while the privileged sections of society remain unaffected and indifferent to the crisis.
• No End in Sight: Despite political parties denying involvement, the culture of crude bombs persists, as seen in the death of a nine-year-old during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

But it was the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946, according to Dutta, that taught modern Bengal about political violence. Speaking to ThePrint, Santanu Mukherjee—the grandson of Gopal Patha, one of the principal figures in the Hindu-Muslim communal riots—said that modern Bengal’s political violence and bomb culture should not be blamed on the events of 1946.

“Yes, my grandfather used violence during the Great Calcutta Killings. But he did so to stop the marauding mobs who were raping and killing Hindus after Muhammed Ali Jinnah’s call for Direct Action Day,” Mukherjee said. He added that the use of firearms and bombs saved Calcutta in 1946. “Unlike politicians who have made crude bombs part of our political culture, Gopal Patha took to arms to save Bengal,” he said.

Exploding class and caste realities

Deba Pratim Ghatak, author of The Original Lynch Mob, a 2024 book documenting incidents of political violence during the 34 years of Left Front’s rule in West Bengal, told ThePrint that the victims of this crude bomb culture are essentially children of the poor.

“The Bhadralok is never the victim. Nor are his kids. While we talk about the bombings in Gaza, we conveniently ignore the maiming and killing of children in our hinterland. Maybe that is why this culture will not end anytime soon,” he said.

Ghatak added that while Children of the Bombs is an important documentary, he found the interview with Bengali singer and songwriter Kabir Suman “rather theatrical”.

“Suman wrote a song called ‘Howzzat’ in 1996 after reading about victims of a crude bomb explosion. But in the documentary, when he meets one of the survivors, he doesn’t even know which of the victims are still alive. He wrote a song about them, yet he did not care all these years to track what has happened to them. That is peak Bhadralok hypocrisy and apathy toward the people at the margins who bear the brunt of crude bomb culture,” Ghatak said.

Ayan Guha, British Academy International Fellow at the University of Sussex and a commentator on Bengal, told ThePrint that the crude bomb culture is not entirely divorced from issues of class and caste.

“The scale of crude bomb violence in West Bengal is considerably higher during the Panchayat elections. In a rural economy afflicted by a massive unemployment crisis, political patronage in the form of doles and benefits from government schemes disbursed through the panchayats has become a principal means of survival for a large section of the rural masses,” Guha said.

He explained that the necessity of capturing panchayats and other political institutions—and of excluding political opponents from control of scarce resources at any cost—lies at the root of the crude bomb culture in West Bengal, a trend that has persisted since the Left Front’s consolidation of power over rural society.

The makers of the documentary asked all the principal political parties in West Bengal whether they had been involved, directly or indirectly, in commissioning the manufacture of crude bombs or in using them for political gain. While the CPI(M) and the Congress denied any involvement and strongly denounced the culture of violence, the makers said that the ruling TMC and the BJP did not respond to the question—even as crude bombs continue to take lives.

As recently as the 2024 Lok Sabha election, nine‑year‑old Raju Biswas was killed by a crude bomb that he had mistaken for a ball. As Biswas was being laid to rest, political slogans could be heard just 500 metres away. Oblivious to the tragedy that had befallen Biswas’s family, the crowd chanted “Joy Bangla.”

(Edited by Prashant)