Birbhum and some other parts of Bengal continued to simmer ahead of the upcoming panchayat elections with two persons including a brother of a Trinamool Congress panchayat pradhan (chairman) died hours after bombs they were allegedly manufacturing went off on Saturday night.
Both were rushed to Kolkata and Rampurhat hospitals with severe burn injuries where they succumbed to their injuries on Sunday leading to a political backlash with the Opposition BJP and Left accusing the TMC of converting Bengal into a bomb-hub of India.
The incident occurred at Margram barely a few miles away from Bagtui village where last February, eleven people were charred to death when their houses were set on fire by the rival groups of the ruling party.
The deceased, identified as, Laltu Seikh, brother of TMC Panchayet Pradhan, died on Sunday afternoon at SSKM Hospital in Kolkata. Another injured TMC worker Newton Seikh died late on Saturday night at Rampurhat hospital where he was admitted with severe burn injuries. The incident comes within a few days of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee personally taking charge of TMC’s organisational affairs in Birbhum district in the absence of party strongman Anubrata Mondal who was presently in jail in cattle smuggling case.
Birbhum SP Nagendranath Tripathi was immediately transferred and replaced by Sunderbans SP Bhaskar Mukherjee. Tripathi who was made the OSD, Police Directorate however got six crucial arrests to be made
saying two prime accused who were at large would soon be arrested.
The Birbhum incident comes in tandem with another blast where at least four persons were severely injured when crude bombs went off on Sunday noon. The foursome were injured when they were allegedly making bombs at Aam Jhora village in Basanti area of South 24 Parganas, sources said adding the four persons were TMC members.
Incidentally at least half-a-dozen children have died and many more have been injured in the past a few months while trying to play with bombs taking them as balls.
Political slugfest started soon after t he Birbhum incident with Bengal Minister Firhad Hakim seeing BJP and Congress hands behind the Birbhum blasts wondering the materials that were used to make the bombs were not easily available and that they had to be fetched from the defence godowns.
“Birbhum is a district bordering Jharkhand which is a Maoist zone, besides the materials like red powder that were being used to make the bombs are not easily available in the open market … they have to be fetched from the open market … so it is very much possible that the BJP may be smuggling such materials into Bengal to malign the TMC,” he said.
BJP national vice president Dilip Ghosh immediately hit back wondering why no bombs were found in BJP leaders’ houses and why bombs were only found in the houses of Trinamool men. “It is possible that if you search you may find bombs in the house of Firhad Hakim’s house,” Ghosh said.