New Delhi: A video containing hateful and violent imagery shared by the Assam BJP’s social media unit has sparked outrage, with critics questioning Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s increasingly shrill and divisive rhetoric ahead of the Assembly elections.
The 18-second clip, posted on the Assam Bharatiya Janata Party’s handle on social media platform X on 7 February and later deleted, showed Sarma symbolically firing a bullet at Congress state president Gaurav Gogoi, who was depicted wearing a skull cap, alongside another man with a henna-dyed beard—visual markers commonly stereotyped with a section of the Muslim community.
The clip, which was deleted several hours after it was uploaded as outrage mounted, ended with a smiling Sarma sporting cowboy attire. It contained captions such as ‘No Mercy’, ‘Foreigner-Free Assam’, ‘Why did he go to Pakistan?’, and ‘No mercy for Bangladeshis’.
On Sunday, Congress social media head Supriya Shrinate wrote on X that deleting the video wasn’t enough. “This is who the BJP really is: mass murderers. This venom, hatred and violence is on you Mr Modi. Are the courts and other institutions sleeping?”
Congress general secretary in charge of organisation, K.C. Venugopal slammed the BJP for the controversial video, saying “this is nothing but a call to genocide – a dream this fascist regime has harboured since decades.”
“This is not an innocuous video to be ignored as troll content. It is poison spread from the very top, and there must be consequences for this,” he posted on X.
An official BJP handle posted a video showing the targeted, ‘point-blank’ murder of minorities. This is nothing but a call to genocide – a dream this fascist regime has harboured since decades.
This is not an innocuous video to be ignored as troll content. It is poison spread… pic.twitter.com/8mHxo4UjZV
— K C Venugopal (@kcvenugopalmp) February 8, 2026
Sarma has been attacking Gogoi and his British wife Elizabeth Colburn, a British citizen, over their alleged links to the Pakistani establishment. The state government even formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the case of alleged interference in India’s internal affairs.
On Friday, addressing a press conference, Sarma announced that the Assam government had decided to hand over the case to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), claiming it was not possible for state-level investigating agencies to take the probe forward beyond a point as “help from Interpol is required”.
Gogoi maintains that Sarma is mischaracterising a private trip he made to Pakistan in 2013 with his wife to deflect attention from alleged corruption linked to the BJP leader’s family.
The Congress leader has termed Sarma’s allegations “ludicrous and ridiculous”, adding that they border on a “C-grade cinema”.
I pity the journalists from Delhi and Assam who had to suffer the most flop press conference of the century. This was worse than a C grade cinema. Most mindless and bogus points offered by the so called political shrewd Chief Minister. This #SuperFlop is in contrast to our…
— Gaurav Gogoi (@GauravGogoiAsm) February 8, 2026
The issue of infiltration from Bangladesh has emerged as the BJP’s central poll plank across states, and more so in Assam, where it has long been considered a threat to Assamese identity and culture. Assam shares 260-plus km of the border, both land and riverine, with Bangladesh.
Through his shrill rhetoric since joining the BJP from the Congress in 2015, Sarma has painted Bangladeshi infiltration as an existential threat.
Late last month, Sarma controversially spoke about the need to “create hardship for Miyas”, a pejorative often used to refer to Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam, suggesting economic boycott as one form of pressure.
“For the next 30 years, we have to practise the politics of polarisation if we want to live… But polarisation is not between Hindu and Muslim. It is between Assamese and Bangladeshi. We don’t fight with Assamese Muslims. We only fight with Bangladeshi Muslims,” Sarma said.
While in public statements Sarma attempts to underline a distinction between Assamese Muslims and Muslims of Bangladeshi origin, this finds little reflection in the BJP’s political rhetoric, including its social media content where such nuances are largely absent.
For instance, last September, the Assam BJP posted AI-generated visuals on X of a future where Muslims had taken over the state. The clip depicted an elderly Muslim man cutting meat in the open, men in skull caps and women in hijabs crowding public places, and government land being taken over.
It also depicted Gogoi and Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi as Muslims with links to Pakistan; Gogoi is frequently referred to as “Paijaan” and a messiah of the “Miyas” in social media posts by the Assam BJP.
The Congress’ Assam unit had lodged a police complaint against BJP, accusing the ruling party of using an AI-generated video to incite communal tension ahead of the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) elections.
According to the 2011 Census, Muslims account for 34 percent of Assam’s population. Muslims are in majority in the districts of Dhubri, Goalpara, Barpeta, Morigaon, Nagaon, Karimganj, Hailakandi, Bongaigaon and Darrang, according to the Census findings.
The elections for the 126-member Assam Assembly are likely to take place in March-April this year.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: 2,000+ Muslims killed in Nellie. But Assam panel report buried for 42 yrs says it wasn’t communal