KOLKATA: A migrant worker from West Bengal’s Murshidabad district was found dead in Tamil Nadu on Monday.
The incident comes weeks after the death of another migrant worker, Jewel Ran in Odisha. Rana also hails from Murshidabad..
According to police sources, the migrant worker
The death of the migrant worker, identified as Amai Sheikh from Suti, was reported in Chennai on Monday.
Murshidabad police are trying to contact their counterparts in Chennai to gather more details.
The family members of the deceased alleged that he was killed by someone in Chennai, where Amai had gone to work as a daily-wage mason.
Amai’s friends, who are from Murshidabad district and worked with him, informed his family about his death on Monday night.
He was the sole earning member of his family, supporting his wife, three minor sons and his mother.
“He has been killed by someone in Chennai and we demand the state administration to probe the incident,” one of the family members alleged.
Neighbours are collecting money to bring Amai’s body back to his home in the Haroa gram panchayat at the earliest.
Local Trinamool Congress leaders said they have informed party MP Khalilur Rahaman to take the initiative to bring the body back to his village.
30-year-old migrant worker Jewel Rana, also hailing from Suti was allegedly killed at Shaktinagar in Sambalpur district, around two weeks ago.
When Jewel along with several other workers of Murshidabad were returning from work, a group of six men stopped them and asked for a bidi. An altercation broke out, leading to a scuffle between the two sides, police said.
He was thrashed severely, and later died while undergoing treatment at the Sambalpur hospital, police said.
They used to work as construction labourers in Sambalpur.
Few days ago, eight migrant workers belonging to minority community from Chepri village in Purulia district in West Bengal were physically assaulted allegedly by a section of BJP-backed Bajrang Dal.
One of the victims developed a severe fracture on his right hand when they were beaten up by a group of mob at Surajpur under Katowali police station in Raipur district of Chhattisgarh.
They had gone to work in a bakery at Surajpur, a few months ago. On Sunday, they got involved in a heated exchange of words with the bakery management because of some problems related to their wages.
A group of local Bajrang Dal, a militant Hindutva organisation that forms the youth wing of Visva Hindu Parishad (VHP), rushed to the spot and beat them up with batons suspecting them as Bengali-speaking Bangladeshi nationals.
Police intervened and rescued the victims and later contacted Purulia district police administration.
Ruling Trinamool Congress leadership in Bengal has been slamming the BJP government at the Centre for regular incidents of alleged attacks on Muslim migrant workers from the state Bengal particularly in BJP-ruled states in the country.
Expressing concern over regular increase in number assaults on migrant labourers from Bengal in Odisha the Congress Working Committee (CWC) member and former president of West Bengal Pradesh Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury had rushed to Sambalpur recently.
Adhir met migrant workers from Bengal there in Sambalpur and listened to their accounts of harassment and violence, and coordinated with local Congress leadership to extend organisational and legal support to the victims.
The Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been strongly condemning the alleged attacks on Bengali-speaking Muslim migrant workers from the state in BJP-ruled states.
While addressing different programmes she described the attacks as “brutal oppression, harassment and violence” against Bengali-speaking people in “every BJP-ruled state”.
