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Molandi (West Bengal): Even at noon, West Bengal’s Molandi feels like a village holding its breath. The heavy silence is broken only by the occasional rattle of a toto-rickshaw navigating the fractured roads. While fields stretch toward the horizon, the village itself feels empty. Most households belong to migrant workers, with the men away in distant cities, returning only for festivals or the high-stakes friction of election season.

At the edge of this quiet settlement sits a small house that serves as a grim monument to the region’s political volatility. A heavy tarpaulin sheet is lashed across the entrance, acting as a permanent curtain against the outside world. 

A police constable and two civic volunteers maintain a 24-hour vigil under the unblinking gaze of two CCTV cameras. About 100 metres away, a temporary police outpost operates, not to patrol the village broadly, but to guard one family whose nine-year-old daughter, Tamanna Khatun, was killed in a blast from a crude bomb on the day of the Kaliganj Assembly bypoll result on June 23, 2025.

Inside, migrant worker Hossein Sheikh nurses his wife, Sabina Sheikh. She has been shattered since the day the victory procession for Trinamool Congress turned into a death march for their child.

The family’s account of that afternoon is chilling. Tamanna, a Class IV student, was under a mango tree in her courtyard, planting a sapling in a tub.

Sabina Sheikh looks on as a little girl plays near the tree where Tamanna was killed. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.

Sabina recalls the moment the celebration reached their gate, “We were thrown away by the........

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