New Delhi: The West Bengal Police on Thursday arrested three locals in the Panihati assembly constituency for allegedly lobbing three crude bombs during a scuffle the previous night.
Panihati was in the news as Ratna Debnath, the mother of the RG Kar trainee doctor who was raped and killed in August 2024, contested from the assembly constituency. The BJP candidate won the constituency by a margin of 28,000-plus votes.
The scuffle took place on Dutta Road, under Ward 2, around 11.30 pm Wednesday, a local police officer told ThePrint, adding that seven people were injured. This happened hours after the personal assistant of senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari was gunned down by unidentified assailants.
“There was a scuffle between two local groups in the area. One group had overpowered the other, forcing them to flee the spot of the scuffle,” the officer further said. “Shortly afterwards, three of them returned on a bike and threw three crude bombs and took their accomplice away.”
As they were already on alert following the gruesome murder of Adhikari’s PA, a team of personnel from the nearby police station responded to the situation along with personnel of the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) deployed in the area.
The arrested trio, identified as Sanjay, Bishu Karmakar, and Bishwajit Mal, were produced before the local court, in charge of the local police station in Khardah, Soumya Roy said.
Around the same time, a BJP worker was shot at with one bullet hitting his abdomen at the Gotra area of the Basirhat police district. He has been hospitalised.
So far, West Bengal has seen five killings, including Adhikari’s PA, with several cases of vandalism and public assault being reported from different parts of the state over the last few days since the announcement of the results of the assembly elections.
After the poll results in 2021, the state had seen several instances of politically motivated sexual assaults and killings. On the order of the Calcutta High Court, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had registered 61 cases related to post-poll violence. The federal agency has filed charge sheets in 44 of those cases—35 of which are of murder, while the remaining nine were related to the offence of rape.
According to CBI sources, 462 accused have been charged and made to face trial, an overwhelming majority of whom belonged to the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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