A video clip showing tribal women in South Dinajpur’s Tapan purportedly being forced to “atone” for their “mistake of joining the BJP” was released by the saffron camp on Friday evening.

Bengal BJP chief Sukanta Majumdar tweeted a 27-second clip in which three women could be seen performing a ritual called “dandavat parikrama”.

Persons doing the “parikrama” have to drag themselves on the road while stretching themselves on their torsos with folded hands.

BJP alleged that four women — only three are seen in the clip — were made to drag themselves for a kilometer before they reached district Trinamul headquarters in Balurghat, also Majumdar’s Lok Sabha constituency.

“Martina Kisku, Shiuli Mardi, Thakran Soren and Malati Murmu, residents of Tapan Gofanagar, Tapan, joined BJP yesterday. They belong to ST community. Today, TMC goons forced them to return to TMC and punished them by asking to do Dandavat Parikrama,” Majumdar tweeted with the video. “TMC has time and again insulted tribal people. This takes it even higher...,” the tweet reads.

These four women were among 200 others in Gofanagar panchayat who joined the BJP on Thursday evening.

By Friday evening, Kisku, Mardi, Soren, and Murmu were back with Trinamul.

Chief of Trinamul’s South Dinajpur women’s wing Pradipta Chakraborty said the four performed the atonement ritual of their own volition.

One of the four women, Kisku, echoed Chakraborty, saying they “did this ritual on their own after spending a sleepless Thursday”. “We were manipulated into joining the BJP. We will remain with Mamata Banerjee,” Kisku said.

But after this brief statement, none of the four women spoke to the media.

Bengal minister Birbaha Hansda, who represents the tribal community, remarked that if someone wanted to rejoin Trinamul that was welcome, but “atonements” were uncalled for.