Trinamool leader shot dead in broad daylight

Kolkata (IANS) | In a shocking incident at Hanskhali in West Bengal’s Nadia district, a local Trinamool Congress leader was shot dead in broad daylight by miscreants on Friday morning. The deceased has been identified as Amod Ali Biswas, who was Trinamool’s regional vice-president in Hanskhali.

According to eyewitnesses, Biswas came to the market on Friday morning and ordered tea at the tea shop, which he used to do every day. Suddenly a group of eight bike-borne miscreants reached the spot and started firing indiscriminately at Biswas from close range. All the miscreants had covered their faces. A blood-soaked Biswas died on the spot, while the assailants fled the scene.

The body has been sent for post-mortem with a large contingent of police patrolling the area as tension prevails in the area. Biswas’s family members claimed that he had been attacked in the past as well.

Biswas’s wife said, his rivals in the area had attacked him thrice in the past. However, he managed to escape on all three occasions. Meanwhile, the political rhetoric in the state has started picking up since the murder. Senior state BJP leader Rahul Sinha said the murder was a result of factionalism and infighting in the Trinamool Congress.

Sinha said, ahead of the upcoming panchayat elections, different factions of the ruling party are trying to establish their supremacy in different parts of the state, whose victims are often party insiders.

On the other hand, Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha member Shantanu Sen claimed that goons from opposition parties were behind Biswas’s murder. He said, “Ahead of the panchayat elections, the opposition parties are deliberately trying to create unrest in the state.”

–IANS