The bombing violence kills and maims children

Over the past three decades, at least 565 children in the Indian state of West Bengal have been injured or killed by homemade bombs, a BBC Eye investigation has found.

So what are these deadly devices and how are they linked to political violence in West Bengal? And why are so many Bengali children paying the price?

On a bright summer morning in May 1996, six boys from a slum in Kolkata, the capital of India’s West Bengal state, stepped out to play cricket in a narrow alley.

Their shantytown, located in the middle-class neighborhood of Jodhpur Park, teemed with life. It was a public holiday – voting day at a general election.

Nine-year-old Puchu Sardar, one of the boys, grabbed a cricket bat and quietly slipped past his sleeping father. Soon the crackling noise of bat meeting ball echoed through the alley.

A ball knocked out of bounds by their makeshift court sent the boys hunting for it in a small garden nearby. There they found six round objects in a black plastic bag.

They looked like cricket balls someone had left behind and the boys returned to the game with their spoils.

One of the “balls” from the bag was thrown at Puchu, who hit it with his bat.

A deafening explosion ripped through the alley. It was a bomb.

When the smoke cleared and neighbors rushed outside, they found Puchu and five of his friends sprawled in the street, their skin black, their clothes sweaty and their bodies torn.

Screams pierced the chaos.

Seven-year-old Raju Das, an orphan raised by his aunt, and seven-year-old Gopal Biswas died of their injuries. Four other boys were injured.

Puchu barely survived, having suffered severe burns and shrapnel wounds to his chest, face and stomach.

He spent over a month in the hospital. When he got home, he had to use kitchen tongs to remove splinters still stuck in his body because his family had run out of money to pay for further medical care.

Puchu and his friends are part of a long, tragic list of children killed or maimed by crude bombs that have been used in West Bengal for decades in a bloody battle for dominance in the state’s violent politics.

There are no publicly available figures on the number of victims in West Bengal.

So the BBC World Service went through every edition of two prominent state newspapers – Anandabazar Patrika and Bartaman Patrika – from 1996 to 2024, looking for reports of children being injured or killed by these units.

We found at least 565 children injured – 94 deaths and 471 injured – per 10 November. This means that, on average, a child has fallen victim to bomb violence every 18 days.

However, the BBC has found incidents where children were injured by these bombs which were not reported by the two newspapers, so the real number of casualties is likely to be higher.

More than 60% of these incidents involved children playing outdoors – gardens, streets, farms, even near schools – where bombs typically used during elections to terrorize opponents were hidden.

Most of the victims the BBC spoke to were poor, children of domestic workers, odd jobs or farm workers.

West Bengal, India’s fourth largest state with a population of more than 100 million, has long struggled with political violence.

Over the years, since India’s independence in 1947, the state has cycled through different rulers – the Congress Party for two decades, the Communist-led Left Front for three, and the current Trinamool Congress since 2011.

In the late 1960s, the state was hit by an armed conflict between Maoist rebels – also called Naxalites – and government forces.

A common thread across all government and insurgency conflicts since then has been the use of bombs as tools of intimidation by political parties to silence opponents, especially during elections.

“Bombs have been [used to settle scores]. This has been happening in Bengal for a long time, more than 100 years,” Pankaj Dutta, a former Inspector General of West Bengal Police, told us.

Bomb making in Bengal has its roots in the rebellion against British rule in the early 1900s.

Early efforts were crude, and casualties were common: one insurgent lost a hand and another died testing a bomb.

Then a rebel returned from France armed with bomb-making skills.

His book bomb – a legal tome filled with explosives hidden in a Cadbury cocoa tin – would have killed its target, a British judge, had he opened it.

The first explosion rocked Midnapore district in 1907 when revolutionaries derailed a train carrying a high-ranking British official by planting a bomb on the tracks.

A few months later, a botched attempt to kill a judge in Muzaffarpur with a bomb hurled into a horse-drawn carriage claimed the lives of two Englishmen.

The act, described by one newspaper as a “huge explosion that startled the city”, had turned a teenage rebel called Khudiram Bose into a martyr and the first “freedom fighter” in the pantheon of Indian revolutionaries.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a nationalist leader, wrote in 1908 that bombs were not just weapons but a new kind of “magical lore”, a “witchcraft” that spread from Bengal to the rest of India.

Today, the crude bombs of Bengal are locally known as peto. They are tied with jute cords and filled with shrapnel-like nails, nuts and glass.

Variations include explosives packed in steel containers or glass bottles. They are used primarily in violent clashes between rival political parties.

Political activists, especially in rural areas, use these bombs to intimidate opponents, disrupt polling stations, or retaliate against perceived enemies.

They are often deployed during elections to sabotage polling stations or to assert control over areas.

Children like Poulami Halder bear the brunt of such violence.

On an April morning in 2018, the then seven-year-old plucked flowers for morning prayers in Gopalpur, a village in North 24 Parganas district dotted with ponds, paddy fields and coconut trees. There was barely a month until the village council elections.

Poulami saw a ball lying near a neighbor’s water pump.

“I picked it up and brought it home,” she recalls.

As she entered, her grandfather, sipping tea, froze at the sight of the object in her hand.

“He said, ‘It’s not a ball – it’s a bomb! Throw it away!’ Before I could react, it exploded in my hand.”

The explosion shattered the silence of the village. Poulami was hit in the “eyes, face and hands” and passed out as chaos erupted around her.

“I remember people running towards me, but I could see very little. I was getting hit everywhere.”

Villagers rushed her to the hospital.

Her injuries were devastating – her left hand was amputated and she spent almost a month in hospital.

An ordinary morning routine had turned into a nightmare that changed Poulami’s life forever in a single, shattering moment.

Poulami is not alone.

Sabina Khatun was 10 years old when a crude bomb exploded in her hand in April 2020 in Jitpur, a village flanked by rice and jute fields in Murshidabad district.

She had taken her goat out to pasture when she stumbled upon the bomb lying in the grass. Curious, she picked it up and started playing with it.

Moments later it detonated in her hands.

“The moment I heard the explosion, I thought, who is going to be disabled this time? Has Sabina been maimed?”, says her mother, Ameena Bibi, her voice heavy with anguish.

“When I stepped outside, I saw people carrying Sabina in their arms. The flesh was visible from her hand.”

Doctors were forced to amputate Sabina’s hand.

Since returning home, she has struggled to rebuild her life, her parents consumed by despair over an uncertain future. Their fears are not unwarranted: in India, women with disabilities often face social stigma that complicates their marriage and job prospects.

“My daughter kept crying and said she would never get her hand back,” says Ameena.

“I kept comforting her and told her, ‘your hand will grow back, your fingers will grow back’.”

Now Sabina struggles with the loss of her hand and struggles with simple daily tasks. “I struggle with drinking water, eating, showering, dressing, going to the toilet.”

Children of the Bombers

In the Indian state of West Bengal, children are routinely maimed, blinded or killed by homemade bombs. BBC Eye examines the political violence at the root of this tragedy and asks why the carnage is allowed to continue.

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These children are maimed by bombs yet lucky to survive and their lives have been changed forever.

Poulami, now 13, got an artificial hand but couldn’t use it – too heavy and outgrowing it quickly. Sabina, 14, struggles with failing eyesight.

Her family says she needs another operation to remove bomb debris from her eyes, but they can’t afford it.

Pulled out of school by his frightened parents, Puchu, now 37, spent years refusing to step outside, often hiding under his bed at the slightest noise.

He never picked up a cricket bat again. His childhood stolen, he now scrapes by with odd construction jobs and bears scars from his past.

But all hope is not lost.

Poulami and Sabina have both learned to ride a bicycle with one hand and continue to go to school. Both dream of becoming teachers. Puchu hopes for a brighter future for his son, five-year-old Rudra – a future in uniform as a policeman.

Despite the terrible toll it takes, there is no sign of raw bomb violence in West Bengal ending.

None of the political parties admit to using bombs for political gain.

When the BBC asked the four main political parties in West Bengal whether they were involved, directly or through intermediaries, in making or using crude bombs, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did not respond.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) vehemently denied involvement, saying it was “committed to upholding the rule of law … and that when it comes to protecting rights and lives, children are of utmost concern “.

The Indian National Congress (INC) also strongly denied using crude bombs for electoral gains, saying it had “never engaged in violence for political or personal gain”.

Although no political party will admit responsibility, none of the experts who spoke to the BBC have any doubt that this carnage is rooted in Bengal’s culture of political violence.

“During any major election here, you will see the rampant use of bombs,” Pankaj Dutta told us. “There is extreme abuse of childhood. It is a lack of care on the part of society.” Mr. Dutta died in November.

Poulami adds: “Those who planted the bombs are still free. No one should leave bombs. No child should ever be hurt like this again.”

But the tragedy continues.

In May this year in Hooghly district, three boys playing near a pond fell unconscious on a cache of bombs. The blast killed Raj Biswas, aged nine, and left his friend maimed and missing an arm. The other boy escaped with a broken leg.

“Look what they have done to my son,” Raj’s grieving father sobbed as he caressed his dead child’s forehead.

As Raj’s body was lowered into a grave, political slogans crackled through the air from a nearby election rally: “Hail Bengal!” the crowd chanted, “Hail Bengal!”

It was election time. And once again, children paid the price.