Egged, Filmed, Shared: How West Bengal Turned Mob Violence Into Content

In a video that surfaced on Facebook in mid-June from Panchla in Howrah district, Mandira Gayen, the pradhan of a TMC-run gram panchayat, is on her knees inside her own office. A mob has thrown eggs at her.

She is crying, pleading with folded hands for it to stop. Someone is recording. A hyperlocal news outlet posted the footage; it was shared over 100 times. The majority of comments celebrated what was done to her. Laughter emojis dominated the reactions.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in West Bengal in May this year, ending 15 years of Trinamool Congress (TMC) rule, one TMC leader after another has been attacked with eggs, filmed, and uploaded. The phenomenon has a name: dim therapy, or egg treatment.

It has its own hashtags — Decode found more than 300 posts listed under #eggtherapy and #dimtherapy each, mostly on Facebook, the most widely used social media platform in the state. And it has its own logic: a feedback loop in which viral content on one screen inspires a new attack on the next street.

"I did not get out of my home for over a week. I still get nightmares," one victim, who refused to speak on record fearing further repercussions, told Decode.

"Whenever I'm outside, I fear my face is reminding them of the incident and they must be laughing at me."

The fear is spreading. TMC parliamentarian Mahua Moitra sought to appear before the police online instead of visiting the station, citing the risk of being egged. Former India cricketer and TMC parliamentarian Kirti Azad said he would apply for a gun licence in self-defence. Most victims, though, could not raise a voice at all.

The Egg And The Smartphone

The smartphone has become as central to these events as the egg itself. In nearly every case Decode documented, one or more people in the crowd were recording.

On June 15, Hemanta Ishwar, a former TMC panchayat member in Howrah district, was dragged by two young men to a playground in Panchla. A mob of over a hundred surrounded him. They pelted eggs at his face and head. Some chanted 'Jai Sree Ram!', some chanted 'chor, chor.' A dozen smartphones captured it. Within hours, the clips were on Facebook. Laughter emojis flooded the comments.

In some cases, the cameras were ready before the eggs were.

At Mekhliganj in Cooch Behar, at least two people had their phone cameras on before the attack on panchayat members began. At least three were already recording when eggs were hurled at the Jalpaiguri municipality chairman inside his office. The footage surfaced on social media from multiple angles.

The attacks escalated as the novelty of egg-throwing faded. Tarakeshwar municipality's former chairman Swapan Samanta was slapped, paraded around the locality in a vest, his shoes and trouser belt hanging around his neck, and forced to do sit-ups holding his ears in the middle of the road. The video flooded social media from multiple sources — several people in the crowd had independently recorded and shared it.

In Singur, panchayat deputy chief Advaita Das was dragged on the road with a rope tied around his waist, his shoes hung around his neck, and then tied to an electric pole while more eggs were hurled at him. In Bardhaman, cow dung water was poured over panchayat vice-chairman Mobil Hossain Mandal. In Ranaghat, TMC councillor Joydip Dutta was made to stand on the street wearing a wedding cap, with a poster reading "Going to jail to marry" tied to his chest.

Each new method appeared as the crowd chased fresh reactions. As Kolkata-based psychiatrist Satyajit Ash told Decode, "When its speciality or novelty goes away and the thing becomes commonplace, people tend to lose interest and the impact reduces."

The crowd, in effect, was chasing fresh virality.

In Cooch Behar's Dinhata, BJP supporters barged inside the house of TMC leader Basanti Narayan and attacked her with eggs. She was then dragged out, made to sit on a stool in a field next to a school, and egged again. She begged for mercy and then sat silently, head down, without resistance.

The Distribution Chain

The attacks drew their reach from a network of hyperlocal digital outlets — small Facebook pages and YouTube channels that serve district and block-level news audiences. Image Bengal, which has over 274,000 followers on Facebook and 76,000 on YouTube, uploaded over 70 videos related to egg attacks on Facebook. They mostly picked up user-generated content. Some of the videos were shared over 1,000 times. NBTV (486,000 Facebook followers), D News Malda (177,000 Facebook followers), and Speed News Bangla (174,000 Facebook followers) shared similar user-generated content in reported form. Some videos were viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

The content was not confined to hyperlocal outlets.

On June 11, the BJP uploaded a video on YouTube showing former minister Ujjwal Biswas being hit with eggs in his office. The caption framed the incident as a reflection of public anger. It was viewed over a million times. News 18 Bangla's video of an egg attack on a TMC councillor during a television interview also crossed a million views. An Asianet Bangla video had over 600,000 views.

Some media reports on YouTube were monetised — though most Facebook reels were not. They drew the traffic regardless.

In one widely shared video, a policeman complained to a senior official: "Madam, they are hurling rotten eggs!" The post was shared over 900 times and drew nearly 20,000 reactions. Many of the 500-plus comments mocked the officer for 'complaining like a schoolboy.' A prison van driver was filmed wearing a helmet, fearing misdirected eggs could hit him.

The humiliation frequently continued in police presence. TMC youth wing leader Soumitra Banerjee was hit with dozens of eggs as police escorted him from a station to their car. Former MLA Ramendra Singha Roy was egged on his way to a prison van. TMC leader Abdul Manan was hit as he was brought out of a prison van in Bolpur. The TMC's Suri bloc unit president, Nurul Islam, was egged as police escorted him from court after receiving bail.

The Algorithm Factor

The virality incentive fuels the on-the-ground actions, says Joyojeet Pal, a professor of information at the University of Michigan, whose research focuses on the role of social media in mainstream politics.

When egg-throwing content regularly goes viral, more people take an interest in creating egg-throwing moments to generate viral content. "By creating such a viral moment, a person who stood little chance of becoming important on social media can become the talk of the town, even if for a day or two," Pal told Decode. Social media algorithms deepen this cycle, Pal explained.

On platforms like Facebook and Instagram, content that generates strong early engagement is pushed to progressively larger audiences — and those who engage with it keep receiving similar content. Once a user watches one egg-throwing video, the platform serves more."Egg-throwing videos are naturally interesting content because people want to see the reaction of the person being egged," said Pal, adding that content showing insult and harassment is highly likely to go viral, as bad behaviour is often rewarded on social media.

"A nasty act is likely to get more views than a compassionate one."

Psychiatrist Satyajit Ash said that in ordinary life, the memory of humiliation fades. But the video does not. "The memory — i.e. the video — remains there permanently. This may make coping a little more difficult," he told Decode. The audience may move on to the next viral moment. The person in the video cannot.

Swapan Samanta, the former Tarakeshwar chairman who was paraded and forced into sit-ups, said the shock is difficult to overcome. "Perhaps, more for us politicians who must appear to have absorbed the shock," he said.

Samanta has been in politics for over four decades. During the Left Front rule before the TMC government, CPI(M) workers attacked him several times; he once suffered a serious head injury. "Nothing compares to what happened this time," he said.

His family was horrified, but Samanta did not stay indoors even that day. The incident happened at noon; he was at his business-cum-political office — he trades in potatoes and bottled water — by the evening. Local people expressed solidarity and condemned the incident. Even some BJP leaders and RSS functionaries telephoned him. But neither did anyone from the administration reach out, nor did he approach the police.

"There is no point in lodging police complaints. Everyone knows nothing's going to happen," Samanta told Decode.

He said he never spent much time on social media. Now he does not use it at all.

Fighting Back On The Same Platforms

In almost all cases, the attackers or their companions controlled the camera. But in some cases, victims used the same platforms to push back.

In Cooch Behar's Dinhata, former BJP leader Diptiman Sengupta was targeted with eggs after he offered cooked food to the family of a jailed TMC leader. A digital portal called Purbottar posted a Facebook reel of the incident; it was shared over 2,500 times and drew over 3,000 comments.

But then, Sengupta went to his own Facebook profile and posted his version — drawing attention to what had been done to him, on his own terms. His post was shared hundreds of times, though he later made the video private.

TMC parliamentarian Mahua Moitra went live from her Facebook profile after a mob threw eggs, stones and vegetables at a party office she was in, targeting the windows. CPI(M) leader and lawyer Sayon Banerjee went live from his Facebook account, showing a mob that had gathered at court premises to hurl eggs at his client, the arrested CPI(M) leader Layek Ali. CPI(M) leader Meenakshi Mukherjee livestreamed from her vehicle when BJP supporters pelted eggs at it.

The comment sections on these posts, unlike those on the attack videos, were largely sympathetic. The incidents were picked up by mainstream media almost immediately.

Sengupta told Decode he tried to file a police complaint, but the police refused to register it. "The administration's attitude was like: 'as long as it's not a deadly attack, deal yourself,'" he said. He added that most of the people orchestrating or participating in the attacks had no deep political involvement before the change of power. "They are trying to come to the limelight by such actions."

The Eggs Start Turning

Some incidents triggered pushback on the ground. In Kolkata, after a group entered the office of the Posta Bazar Merchant's Association, hurled eggs at its general secretary Biswanath Agarwal, and slapped him, the association responded with an indefinite strike and a protest rally until the culprits were arrested.

In East Midnapore's Ramnagar, when BJP worker Subrata Jana broke an egg on the head of aged TMC leader Manas Das, people nearby confronted Jana, asking why he had done it. Cornered, Jana said he was doing it "on government order" and that he was "in-charge." This enraged the crowd further.

The video — which captured both the egging and the confrontation in a single, unbroken sequence — was shared hundreds of times from multiple accounts, drawing mostly critical comments. 

The local BJP MLA distanced the party from Jana's actions. Jana issued a video apology for bringing the party into what he called a personal dislike.

The targets, too, began to spread beyond the TMC. A woman at a meeting of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a sister organisation of the BJP, was attacked. A school headmaster in Malda was egged. Chandan Goswami, an Indian Air Force veteran-turned-businessman in Howrah with no party affiliation, was targeted.

And by the last week of July, egg-attack targets included BJP panchayat members in the Khargram area of Murshidabad district. In Bardhaman, some BJP workers threw eggs at the owners of a pond who protested the administration's move to 'dedicate the pond to the masses' without even informing the owners. They fought back. A local outlet, Mobile News 19, was present throughout; the majority of the 1,800 comments their report drew expressed grave concerns about the descent into lawlessness.

A day after BJP state unit president Samik Bhattacharya cautioned workers on August 1, "An unwanted egg therapy is going on in the state. Beware, the direction of the eggs can change any time", a BJP leader at Sitalkuchi in Cooch Behar was egged by BJP supporters accusing him of colluding with the TMC.

The Political Context

This is happening as the TMC remains split, with a majority of its parliamentarians and legislators attempting to take the party's name, symbol, funds, and control away from founder-chairperson Mamata Banerjee. None of the TMC leaders who rebelled against Banerjee have faced "egg-therapy" — which is why some BJP critics see the mob violence as a tactic to pressure grassroots TMC leaders into joining the breakaway faction.

Political commentator Subhamoy Maitra told Decode that the post-election trend of TMC deserters growing close to the BJP may have worsened the situation, creating a public perception that TMC leaders accused of corruption may escape consequences by switching sides. "People have become used to seeing leaders from the TMC and the BJP frequently switching camps, but the post-election scenario has sunk to newer lows," he said. "This may be increasing public frustration and contributing to the trend of people taking laws into their hands."

Maitra said the BJP leadership's appeals to stop have had little effect, which he attributed to a section of people's lack of trust in the political-administrative system.

BJP responses have been mixed. On June 21, Bhattacharya said egg-throwing cannot be part of any political party's agenda. On June 23, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari cautioned: "Why are you throwing eggs unnecessarily? People aren't pleased." But state minister Dilip Ghosh called it Bengal's "innovative contribution" to the world of protests, praised the throwers' aim, and suggested egging intellectuals who raise questions about deaths in police encounters.

CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Salim demanded legal action both against those facing corruption charges and those taking the law into their own hands. "This type of so-called instant justice essentially targets human dignity with public humiliation at will," he said.

The Court Steps In

Most victims did not dare file police complaints. The TMC approached the Calcutta High Court seeking intervention. The state government told the court it had acted in every case where a complaint was filed.

On June 30, the court directed the state police to formulate guidelines and share them with all police stations. "To dehumanise a man is unreasonable and arbitrary," the bench said. "Dignity and security that the law affords are not privileges conferred at the discretion of those in authority; they are rights inherent to every individual, regardless of station, circumstance or means."

The court reminded the state of its responsibility to protect the accused from inhumanity.

"The incidents of hurling eggs upon the accused persons, treating them to be scurrilous imposters, need to be restricted and it is the State's obligation to extend due protection to the persons accused," it said.

On July 20, the court asked the state for information on all egg attacks since June 30. The matter was scheduled to be heard on August 17, but it will be given a new date

The attacks have not stopped.

On August 20, at a protest gathering of leftist students outside Jadavpur University in Kolkata, a few eggs flew in. The leftist students blamed supporters of the ABVP, the BJP's student wing. "Everybody knows which political culture egg pelting belongs to," they said.

Three months in, the egg has become its own political language.