Watch: Police van set on fire in Kolkata, BJP says not their men

The video of a man dressed in a saffron T shirt setting a police van on fire during Tuesday's BJP protests in Kolkata has been shared online, with the BJP denying he had anything to do with the party.

Youth Congress national chief BS Srinivas tweeted the 58-second video which showed a man using a cigarette lighter to set fire to a towel lying on the front seat of a vandalised police van. Another in a white T shirt was trying to open the petrol tank, while yet another was seen splashing some liquid over the van. In the end a man in dark blue shirt and denims tried to apply a lighter to the towel which was already burning.

The video ended with the towel catching fire, but it was not known whether the van was gutted.


"Identify which party's rioters are burning a police jeep in West Bengal?" Srinivas wrote in Hindi.

Srinivas also tweeted another video in which a group waving a BJP flag vandalised a police van. "I am sure the Prime Minister will identify these rioters by their clothes and flags, and will never forgive them in his heart," he wrote on that one.

Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari denied a BJP hand in the violence.

"Police may done it themselves. Our workers were not carrying any weapons. Maybe Trinamool Congress's jihadis came and carried out the violence," NDTV quoted him as saying.

Parts of Kolkata and Howrah district turned into a battlefield on Tuesday as BJP supporters clashed with the police while trying to get past barricades set up to prevent them from marching towards the West Bengal secretariat ‘Nabanna'.

Reports said a police vehicle was also set on fire during the march, and that several police officers and saffron camp members, including leaders Mina Devi Purohit and Swapan Dasgupta, were injured.

BJP's IT in-charge Amit Malviya also shared another video, alleging, “Mamata Banerjee sent TMC cadres to pelt stones at the police so that later BJP could be blamed for it."