The sexual assault and killing of an 11-year-old girl last weekend set off days of protests in Baruipur, a city in India’s West Bengal state, this week. The crime and the violent response to it has inflamed tensions between Hindus and Muslims and is testing the state’s newly elected ruling party, which had pledged to better protect women.
The girl, whose body was found on Sunday, had been stuffed in a plastic bag and left in a swampy forest near a set of train tracks on the outskirts of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal. An autopsy indicated that she was most likely alive when she was left in the forest, according to Barnali Dey, a sub-inspector with the police in Baruipur.
The crime quickly took on a political and sectarian dimension. The Hindu nationalist policies of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have unsettled the country’s large Muslim minority. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been widely criticized for vilifying Muslims in political speeches and videos, and passing a citizenship law that excludes them.
Ms. Dey said that the victim was Muslim, while a man suspected of the crime, who was later killed in custody, was Hindu. West Bengal is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in India and borders Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
The B.J.P., which recently took power in West Bengal for the first time, is now facing an early test of its leadership. It campaigned in part on promises to improve women’s safety in the state, where a doctor at a Kolkata hospital was raped and murdered in 2024.
The girl killed in Baruipur, who has not been named, went out alone on Saturday evening in the Surjyapur Haat neighborhood to buy a birthday gift for a friend, according to Ms. Dey. When she did not return, her family contacted the authorities.
Ms. Dey described a tense situation building in the neighborhood last weekend, with family members and friends growing agitated as the search, hampered by rainy conditions, wore on. She said that the family did not believe the police were taking the disappearance seriously enough.
After examining CCTV footage from the neighborhood, investigators arrested Prabhas Mondal, who led the police to the girl’s body on Sunday, Ms. Dey said. His interrogation led to the arrest of three other men, who are in custody, she said.
Once word spread that the girl had been found dead, protests began on Sunday, and anger in the area escalated. Groups of people clashed with police officers, and one man was beaten to death by the crowd in the belief he was connected to the crime, Ms. Dey said.
On Wednesday, Mr. Mondal was fatally shot in custody, according to Ms. Dey. She did not provide any details of the circumstances of his death.
The violence this week comes at a sensitive political moment. Voters in West Bengal tossed out Mamata Banerjee, one of Mr. Modi’s most outspoken critics, ending her 15 years in power, when they elected the B.J.P. to power in the state in May. The B.J.P. had appealed directly to female voters with promises to help them feel safer.
The issue was especially potent after the rape and murder of the Kolkata doctor. The B.J.P. fielded the mother of the victim as a candidate for the state legislature, and she won.
Critics of the party said the case of the 11-year-old’s killing and its violent aftermath showed a dark side of governance by the B.J.P. They accuse the party’s leaders of cynically using the issue of women’s safety in a country where rape and domestic violence remain common.
The chief minister of West Bengal, Suvendu Adhikari, told reporters that his government was “doing everything possible to ensure such incidents don’t happen anywhere in West Bengal.” He reinforced “the commitment we have from day one” to the safety of women and girls.
He said he had spoken to the victim’s family and said he had promised to “do what it takes” to bring those responsible to justice, including pursuing capital punishment.
He also addressed those responsible for violence and vandalism during this week’s unrest. “All of them will be arrested. No one will be spared,” he said.
Jawhar Sircar, a former member of India’s upper house of Parliament and a critic of the B.J.P., said the young girl’s killing was reprehensible.
“But equally terrible,” he added, were the two deaths — at the hands of a mob and the police — which he blamed on tensions he said the B.J.P. had inflamed. “The Baruipur incident introduced Bengal to the party and its government’s methods,” Mr. Sircar said.