“Bajrang Dal members overpowered us!” Prasenjit Saha says he never married following Islamic Rituals

Silchar’s Prasenjit Saha has called a press conference to blame the media for allegedly publishing “fake news” about his wedding. On August 4, he got married in a marriage hall at Sadarghat. The groom and his friends went there dressed up like Arabian Sheiks, wearing thawb and long gowns, with Prasenjit being the obvious centre of attraction. He said that he didn’t remarry the next day, rather followed a post-wedding ritual along with “shaat pakh”. In Sylheti, it’s called the “Bashi Biya”.

Barak Bulletin was among the first to publish the news about this “fancy dress contest” following a statement by Bajrang Dal and other Far Right Group’s mouthpiece, Mithun Nath. In Nath’s statement, he clearly said, “The couple were remarried after Bajrang Dal’s intervention”. Even though Nath said those words in Bengali, nothing was lost in translation.

In the press conference, Saha said, “It was my long-term dream to marry wearing a Sheikh’s costume and that is why I dressed up in that way. I was hardly wearing this costume for 15 minutes after reaching the venue. The sole reason behind wearing this dress was to follow a new trend but I didn’t think it would become this huge of an issue.”

Regarding the case of Islamic weddings, the newlyweds said, “I am a very secular person and I have friends from different religious groups. But it’s not true that we got married in the Islamic style, everything was done following the Hindu Bengali tradition. But the next day when Bajrang Dal came to the wedding venue, they were not at all ready to believe that we actually married in the Hindu way and said they’ll get us married again following Hindu tradition.”

When asked why they apologised if they were married in the Hindu way, they said, “They were overpowering us in number and were not at all listening to what we were saying. The situation could become hostile anytime and that’s why I was bound to apologise on camera and chant “Jai Shree Ram”. Further, Prasenjit has also rejected the fact about converting to Islam through an affidavit and becoming Khan.

He said, “We didn’t change our title to convert to Islam, our Khan meant Hindu Khan. In 2017, due to a family fight between my father and his brothers he decided to abandon our family title Saha and adopt Khan. This had nothing to do with Islam”. About the picture of his father wearing a skull cap and praying, Saha said, it was done out for “entertainment”. To quote Saha, “It is totally a false claim that my father converted to Islam. The photo where he is praying wearing a skullcap is just a pose. Maybe he always wanted to dress like this because we, being from a secular country, should respect all religions. This photo was taken in my father’s office and I don’t know how it went viral, just like the stamp papers of the affidavit did.”

He further went on to say that, if he knew this would hurt people’s sentiments, he wouldn’t have done this. According to his statement in the press meeting at his home, “I posted a reel on the Instagram story and also posted about the same dress-related thing on social media before our wedding, back then no one objected about it, so I went along with this”. But a dive deep into his open social media accounts has no trace of this “Habibi costume”. Is this just playing the “victim card” by blaming the media for fake news? Prasenjit Saha is a vlogger and his internet identity is PS. Was it all done for attention and to gain engagement?