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The BJP leader assured Bitan’s wife Sohini that they would avenge his killing, emphasising that the deaths of the tourists were religious and not political
Suvendu Adhikari with Bitan’s three-and-a-half-year-old son in his arms. (News18)
Emotions ran high at the Kolkata airport on Wednesday evening as the bodies of Bitan Adhikary and Samir Guha, who were killed in the Pahalgam terror attack, arrived in the city. Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, along with several BJP leaders and TMC ministers, was present at the airport to pay his respects.
As a grief-stricken Sohini Adhikary, Bitan’s wife, broke down upon seeing Suvendu Adhikari, he took Bitan’s three-and-a-half-year-old son into his arms and reassured her, saying: “Don’t worry, sister. I will take his full responsibility. They killed Bitan because he was a Hindu. We are Modi’s sons. Just like Gaza was finished, we too will give a fitting reply.”
The young boy, who had witnessed the brutal killing of his father, had fallen asleep in Adhikari’s arms, unaware of the grief surrounding him.
Recounting the Pahalgam horror, Sohini said: “They asked us, ‘Are you Muslims? Can you recite the Kalma?’ And then… they killed him. My child keeps saying, ‘Fire… fire… Mummy, Papa gone.’ His father was murdered right before his eyes.”
She added, “I have no one left. My husband was everything to me. He believed in the BJP and supported it wholeheartedly.”
Suvendu Adhikari emphasised that the killing was not political but religious in nature. He assured Sohini that he would visit their home on Thursday and remain by their side. “This is not just about politics—it’s about religion,” he said.
Bitan’s parents Bureshwar and Maya, who had once fled Bangladesh due to religious persecution, are devastated. “We left our homeland because we were Hindus. We never imagined our son would meet the same fate here,” they said in disbelief.
Bitan was among the 26 people—mostly tourists—who were shot dead by terrorists in Pahalgam. Three terrorists who carried out a barbaric attack have been identified, with agencies saying the group had been active in the area for the last one month.
The Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) co-founded by Hafiz Saeed, has claimed responsibility for the attack. The TRF came into existence in 2019 as a proxy outfit of LeT in the aftermath of the abrogation of Article 370 and revocation of special status to J&K in August that year.