Tensions ran high at Jamuria in Asansol when Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Babul Supriyo were stopped from entering the town “on the pretext of communal disturbance.” The two leaders had gone to see the kin of a rape-and-murder victim whose body was fished out from a nearby water-filled coal pit.
Supriyo who is a local MP walked for more than three hours to reach the spot when his convoy was stopped by the police even as he had heated arguments of top officials including the Commissioner of Police who allegedly spoke to him “indecently” over the telephone.
“When I told him that I as a local MP had every right to visit the area he rudely told me that I was conducting in an irresponsible manner” Supriyo said even as he broke through the police cordon and forced his entry into the village at the head of a large crowd.
The minor girl, a Class X student went missing from Monday and was allegedly raped and killed even as her family members begged the police to search her. “The police asked us to wait for 24 hours before they could do anything about it,” her kin said even as locals said the culprits belonged to a particular community and the police were not arresting them because of the Government’s vote bank politics.
When the MP asked the cops to show the copies of the prohibitive orders which they claimed to have been clamped in the area “they failed to show any and acting like a Trinamool Congress cadre stopped me from entering Jamuria” he said.
“The police are doing nothing to catch the culprits and arresting the BJP workers for raising their voices. One of our workers has been hit on his head with a sword in front of the police but the criminals have not been arrested.”
A lot of tension was created as thousands of people who gathered around him shouted anti-Government-anti-police slogans. Bengal in the past four years or so jumped to number one slot in terms of attacks on women and murder.
Irani who was also stopped from visiting the area launched a scathing attack on the Mamata Banerjee Government for promoting the criminals and suppressing the innocent.
Irani who was vesting Durgapur to address a rally said “the Government had been one that protected criminals only.” Raising the Malda issue she said “the police watched even as the criminals torched a police station in Malda because they were all Trinamool voters.” About the Kolkata hit-and-run case where a Trinamool leader’s son had early this month mowed down an Air Force official Irani said in Bengal rule of law had been raised to the ground and the high and the mighty were twisting law at will.
Meanwhile, in a clear show of distrust over the way the police were handling the hit-and-run case the Air Force has reportedly asked the police administration for evidences they had gathered for its own reference and demanded a joint investigation in the case.
The Defence Ministry is also conducting a probe into the case.