KOLKATA: Three persons were killed and several others injured in violent clashes between CPM and Trinamool Congress cadres on Tuesday night over formation of panchayat boards in three-gram panchayats at Amdanga in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal.
The deceased have been identified as TMC workers Quddus Gani and Nasir Haldar and CPM worker Muzaffar Ahmed. With these fresh deaths, a total of eight political activists have been killed over formation of panchayat boards across the state in the past four days.
Nasir Haldar and Muzaffar Ahmed were shot point blank on the roads outside their homes while Quddus Gani was shot point blank in his house and his body dragged outside. Some 2,500 country-made bombs were lobbed by both CPM and TMC cadres before and after the killings. Sources revealed that violence erupted after BJP and CPM attempted to form a localised alliance in hung gram panchayats Taraberia, Bodai and Marich comprising eight villages to thwart off TMC from power.
Section 144 CrPC was clamped in the eight villages and police conducted route marches along the villages to recover unexploded bombs and arrest accused persons. Five TMC leaders were arrested from the villages and nine CPM leaders were arrested from R G Kar hospital in Kolkata where they had gone to admit the injured. Amdanga police station SHO Manas Kumar Das was removed from his post and previous SHO Bishal Kumar Biswas was reinstated in his position.
Panchayat board formation has been stalled in the three violence-hit gram panchayats. Food and supplies minister and Habra MLA Jyotipriya Mallick blamed CPM for the violence. "Some weapons were stocked before and CPM brought more weapons from outside. The entire blueprint of the attacks was planned by district leadership CPM at Barasat. BJP and Congress supported them," he said. On the other hand, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury smelled a Didi-Modi nexus in the attacks. "There is an ongoing emergency across the country but the situation is worse in Bengal. Elected representatives are being openly killed. Amdanga incident shows that TMC doesn't want anyone else to win. Their leveling of baseless allegations against us accusing us of planning the attacks is just a ploy to cover up their own acts. Everyone knows the nexus between Didi and Modi. They are two sides of the same coin. Why else would the Centre take no action on Narada and Sarada scams?," he said.
CPM district secretary Mrinal Chakraborty said: "The violence was unleashed to stop formation of boards. TMC brought anti-socials from Barrackpore to unleash terror and put the blame on us." Tanmay Bhattacharya, CPM's Dum Dum Uttar MLA said: "Why would CPM unleash terror in a place where we already won and were on the way of forming boards?" Police suspects that the guns were brought from illegal arms factories in Bihar's Munger but the bombs were locally made.