Raju Ghosh hasn't opened his stall in over a week. He won't say where he is. Unknown numbers call in the middle of the night, with abuse, threats, and ultimatums to shut his shop forever. His pregnant wife has been advised to bed-rest. Four labourers who woke up with him at 2 am every morning to knead dough, roll flatbreads and fry them in batches have no work.
"I feel extremely threatened," he said. "I cannot divulge my exact location."
A month ago, Ghosh was one of Bengal's most recognisable faces. Raju Da Pocket Paratha became popular for a plate of food: three parathas, unlimited torkari of seasonal vegetables and potatoes, a boiled egg, and his trademark apple-shaped onion— all for thirty-five rupees outside Sealdah railway station. He had become an internet sensation.
Food vloggers crowded him for content. Reels racked up views in lakhs. The queue grew so long that he had to designate a separate time slot after the 9 am rush for the cameras, so they wouldn't crowd out the commuters who actually needed to eat.
Then the Assembly election results came on May 4. The BJP swept Bengal with 207 seats. And within 24 hours, the internet had begun its accounting.
West Bengal is not new to post-poll violence. Vandalisation, arson, the deaths of party workers on both sides — the state has seen all of this after previous verdicts. But what followed the May 4 result has a different character. A shared phone number. A home address pulled from Google Street View. A morphed photograph. A rape threat filmed and delivered directly to its target.
The crowd did not need to organise, it needed an address and the Internet to perpetrate virtual violence in a mob-like culture.
Ghosh was beaten on the Ashoknagar-Sealdah local train on May 5, he says, by men who wanted him to chant Jai Shri Ram. He had tried covering his face with a mask while travelling, anticipating trouble. It didn't help.
The charge against him was layered. During the polling season, a video had circulated showing Ghosh and friends cooking mutton on a terrace where a Shiv temple was also visible. Pro-Hindutva users filled his comment sections. He apologised, but it wasn't enough.
"A large section was waiting for the results on May 4 to pounce on me," he said. "Anticipating some anger, I had closed my shop two days before the election results. Soon after, I was attacked."
Disturbing visuals of the attack — Ghosh being pulled by his shirt collar, dragged out of a moving train — flooded the internet post-results. The videos were edited to include vlogger commentary supporting the thrashing. A morphed image showing him with invented, more severe injuries circulated alongside to amplify the outrage. However, Ghosh never went to the cops to lodge a formal complaint.
“I have to make a living through the food stall and cannot afford to follow up on a police complaint. So if an apology can solve things, so be it,” Ghosh said.
Dr Claire Crawford, a political sociologist at University of Cambridge, has been studying the internet culture of doxxing in India and the perpetrators behind them.
She told Decode how the perpetration happens at the ground level, "The IT Cells are made up of party employees, volunteers, and loosely affiliated supporters. Activities like doxxing and online harassment are not necessarily directed from the top," Crawford said.
The anger had been building for some time. Ghosh is not simply a street food vendor. His virality had made him useful to the Trinamool Congress when it was in power. And that association had made him a target once it fell.
"Since I was very viral and had to run my business, I supported the ruling party," he said.
The 30-year-old hawker from Guma, a village in North 24 Parganas, understood that in West Bengal, neutrality is not always an option for someone with a public face. He had in the past refused to chant Jai Shri Ram and willingly chanted Joy Bangla, a pro-TMC slogan.
Since the attack, reels show him raising Jai Shri Ram slogans.
His face had by December 2025 become conspicuous enough that he was invited to a private meeting with Argentine footballer Lionel Messi, arranged by then sports minister Aroop Biswas during the footballer's India tour. The event turned into a scandal. Messi reportedly stormed out of Salt Lake Stadium early after VIP guests personally known to Biswas crowded the field, blocking spectators who had paid to be there. Event organiser Satadru Dutta was arrested from the Kolkata airport.
The photograph of Ghosh posing with Messi went viral. He initially told people it was AI-generated. "I had to lie about the image because I feared an attack in December itself," he confessed.
After TMC's loss, the photograph became a fresh grievance. "Even random people started threatening me on the phone as they have a grudge against me for being able to meet Messi," he said.
Ghosh was pulled into TMC’s orbit, even unwittingly, with him posing with top brass TMC leaders like Madan Mitra. But now, the party seems to have deserted him. Decode has reached out to TMC for a comment.
The New-Age Violence
Raju Ghosh's story is the most visible, virality made him findable. But the modus operandi is the same across multiple cases: online harassment that crosses into offline threat.
Astami Giri, a TMC supporter from Nandigram's Boyal village, has left her home since the results. A man in saffron gulal, carrying BJP flags, filmed himself at the Digha bus depot announcing his intention to travel to her location and rape her. He was identified as Raju Pradhan, a tour operator from Digha. The video was sent directly to Giri.
Giri, who has around five lakh followers on her pro-TMC Facebook page, has been at an undisclosed location since. "I want to go back home and continue with my studies," she told this reporter. She is working toward a law degree from Haldia Law College. "I have been feeling extremely vulnerable after the rape threat."
Both Giri and Ghosh tried filing police complaints.
Ghosh was told that Ashoknagar police don't report to duty at 5 am — when he travels to Sealdah — and so could not provide security. In Nandigram, the local police outrightly refused to lodge Giri's complaint. Notably, Nandigram is Suvendu Adhikari's constituency, the current Chief Minister has won it twice consecutively.
Dr Crawford feels that doxxing grassroot activists and ground-level party workers are intentional. "Beyond being a terrifying experience for the individuals who are targeted, it creates an atmosphere of fear and discouraging ordinary people from participating in politics. From this perspective, it is not surprising who are targeted. Threats to party officials alone would not have this widespread chilling effect."
Incidentally Giri won a best content creator award from TMC General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee in January this year for her pro-TMC content on the internet. She has since spoken to TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee. "Abhishek da has advised me to lie low for some days. I believe this will subside after a month and I can go back and carry on with my studies."
The doxxing has not been limited to ground workers or sympathisers. In Nadia, TMC councillor Nibedita Basu Mukherjee posted a routine vote-appeal video before the second phase of elections. The comments referenced her 25-year-old son and husband by name. "The comments were made from nameless and faceless profiles forcing me to think that they are people who are closely associated with me," she said. She chose not to delete the post. She wanted it documented.
Nilanjan Das, recently elevated to TMC's core committee, has received over a thousand calls since May 4. His home address in Hooghly's Serampore was posted on X from Google Street View screenshots. His Aadhaar number was circulated. Voice notes shared with this reporter included threats directed at his septuagenarian mother.
"They thought I stepped back and showed cowardice," Das said. After the results, he had changed his Twitter biography, removing his TMC spokesperson designation. "Trolls piled up on me. I suddenly became their punching bag."
While Das has reported the accounts on X, he feels no action will be taken. He chose to deactivate his own instead. “I have not filed any complaint with the police because I know I will be harassed instead,” he said.
For Garga Chatterjee, founder of pro-Bengali advocacy organisation Bangla Pokkho, the doxxing did not just end with his arrest on May 12 on charges of spreading EVM misinformation. Narratives about him possessing 24 rounds of bullets spread widely online.
"The kind of fake narratives we are hearing about Garga are bizarre," said Kaushik Maiti of Bangla Pokkho. "I signed the seizure list issued by Kolkata Police and it had the mention of only two phones."
A day after the BJP won, state party president Samik Bhattacharya told reporters that post-poll violence would not be tolerated in any form. "If anyone from our party is found involved, we will be compelled to remove them," he said. Local MLAs who have taken charge of the constituencies have also visited usurped party offices and handed them over to whom they belonged to - TMC or CPI(M).
Bankim Chandra Ghosh, the winning BJP MLA from Chakdaha, visited Akanta Apan, a viral food joint from the area that was attacked after the poll results. Ghosh assured safety after the owner had to shut it down and discontinue service because of dangers post May 4.
The Calcutta High Court on May 14 directed West Bengal police to ensure the safety of people displaced by post-poll violence and arrange for their safe return. Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee put on the lawyer's robe and argued on the alleged saffron violence in the state. While TMC has welcomed the court order, BJP termed the allegations as baseless.
For Das, Giri and Basu, the party will eventually close ranks. For Garga Chatterjee, the legal process gives his case a formal frame. But for Raju Ghosh — a daily wage hawker whose business was built on footfalls and reels — there is no committee to call, no spokesperson designation to hide behind.
He built his business on feeding strangers. He is now afraid of them.
“I have been beaten and called names but if the mob comes for me on the day I reopen my shop, I will close it and work as a driver or a mason somewhere. There is no dearth of work in the country,” a hopeful yet scared Ghosh said.
