Face of fascism: Opposition trains guns at BJP over Himanta's 'point-blank' video

The Assam BJP's official video showing Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma symbolically firing at Muslims sparked widespread outrage and political condemnation across the state. The controversial post was deleted amid accusations of incitement to violence and communal hatred.

A video shared on the Assam BJP’s official social media account, depicting Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma symbolically firing at Muslims at point-blank range, triggered sharp political backlash and allegations of incitement to violence, forcing its deletion amid mounting outrage.

The video, captioned “point blank shot”, showed what appeared to be original footage of Sarma handling an air rifle, interspersed with artificial intelligence-generated visuals of bullets striking images of men wearing skull caps and beards, markers clearly associated with Muslim identity. Text flashed across the screen reading “foreigner free Assam” and “No mercy”, alongside other phrases that critics described as overtly communal.

In some frames, Sarma was portrayed as a hero from a Western-style film, while Assamese text in the video reportedly read, “Why did you not go to Pakistan?” and “There is no forgiveness to Bangladeshis.” The timing of the post coincided with heightened tensions over rhetoric targeting Bengali-origin Muslims in Assam.

The Congress strongly condemned the video, calling it “deeply abhorrent and disturbing” and rejecting any attempt to dismiss it as troll content.

“The BJP’s official Assam Pradesh handle posted a video that appears to glorify the targeted, ‘point-blank’ murder of minorities. This amounts to a call to mass violence and genocide,” the party said in a statement shared on its official handle. It urged the judiciary to intervene, saying there was little expectation that the Prime Minister would act.

Senior Congress leader K C Venugopal echoed the charge, writing that the video was “poison spread from the very top” and demanded consequences without leniency. Party leader Supriya Shrinate also reacted sharply, saying deleting the video was “not enough” and asking whether courts and institutions were “sleeping”.