The Bengal Police have failed where its Bihar counterpart succeeded triggering on Wednesday a large-scale violence and arsoning at Paschimpara village off Diamond Harbour some 40 miles from here.
Much like the Aditya Sachdeva murder case, a 21-year-old ITI student was lynched on Monday by a gang of miscreants led by a Trinamool Congress panchayat member Tapas Mullick who mistook him as a cattle-smuggler.
Kaushik Purakayastha, the victim, had gone to her aunt’s place to attend a family function. While he was strolling outside his relative’s house late in the evening he was accosted by his tormentors on charges of stealing a buffalo allegedly purchased for sacrifice (bali).
He was allegedly dragged inside a club room controlled by the local TMC men and severely clubbed for two hours. Even his mother was roughed up while she pleaded for mercy. The severely bleeding boy was allowed to be transported to a hospital only when his mother gave a written undertaking to pay Rs70,000 for the stolen animal.
The boy died on way to SSKM Hospital in Kolkata. Ironically almost at the same time the buffalo that has snapped its peg and fled was discovered in the same village.
A large crowd on Monday ransacked houses at Paschimpara, set fire to paddy stacks after failing to catch Mullick, a panchayat vice chairman and a Trinamool Congress Trade Union Congress leader at Kolkata Port.
Mullick still remained “untraceable,” the local police said while his father claimed he had left his house on a motorbike on Wednesday morning some 36 hours after the incident took place.
“It is obnoxious on the part of the police. If Bihar Police can arrest, son of an MlC on same charges why cannot Bengal Police catch even a small panchayat member even 56 hours after the murder taking place” asked CPI(M) leader Kanti Ganguli.
A woman and four men had been arrested in the case. “The police have arrested only one of the ten people named in the FIR” said the relatives of the victim, the only child of his parents.