West Bengal: Bomb violence kills and maims children

At least 565 children have been injured or killed by home-made bombs in India’s West Bengal state over the past three decades, a BBC Eye investigation has found.

But what are these deadly devices and how are they linked to political violence in West Bengal? So 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 the Indian state of West Bengal, came out to play cricket in a narrow alley.

Their slum in the middle-class neighborhood of Jodhpur Park was teeming with life. It was a holiday – voting day in the general election.

One of the boys, nine-year-old Puchu Sardar, carried his cricket bat past his peacefully sleeping father. Soon the cracking sound of the ball meeting the bat echoed down the alley.

A ball that left the confines of their makeshift court sent the boys scrambling in a small garden nearby. There, they found six round objects in a black plastic bag.

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

One of the “balls” in the bag was thrown to Puchu, who hit it with a bat.

An explosion was heard in the alley. It was the bomb.

When the smoke cleared and the neighbors came out, they found Puchu and his five friends sprawled in the street, their skin blackened, their clothes burnt, their bodies torn.

Screams pierced the chaos.

Seven-year-old Raju Das and seven-year-old Gopal Biswas, orphans raised by their aunt, succumbed to their injuries. Four other boys were injured.

Puchú barely survived after receiving serious burns and shrapnel wounds on his chest, face and abdomen.

He was in the hospital for more than a month. When he got home, he had to use kitchen tongs to remove the shrapnel still left in his body because his family had run out of money for more medical care.