Taking a cue from their Samajwadi brethren of UP alleged Trinamool Congress leaders of Bankura in Bengal on Monday evening launched a near-fatal attack on a journalist who was shifted to Kolkata on Tuesday in a serious condition sources said.
In a grisly attack apparently to demoralise and discourage the fourth estate from doing stories that could go against the ruling outfit, ABP Ananda’s Bankura district correspondent Swapan Nyogi was first waylaid and then brutally attacked with choppers and rod right in front of a police station allegedly by a district Trinamool leader.
Nyogi was returning from his daily assignment and was waylaid by the miscreants. “They pointed a gun at me so that I did not shout for help and then started hitting me with rods and chopper” the scribe who had earlier ignored the Trinamool leader’s threats against covering a story on how the ruling outfit was manipulating the elections of a local cooperative society. Such elections are crucial for the Trinamool ahead of the next year’s Assembly elections.
District Trinamool leader S Maji and another accomplice was arrested but not before the Bengal civil society once again launched a scathing attack on the Trinamool Congress. “Bengal has become an authoritarian State and something has to be done immediately to contain this or there is no hope for the citizens,” said Sujan Chakrabarty of the CPI(M). “A time has come when the civil society should not only criticize but also descend on the streets to prevent such attacks” said actor Kaushik Sen.