From Birbhum to Murshidabad, Bengal’s countryside continued to simmer with rampaging Trinamool Congress cadres engaging their counterparts from the Opposition — BJP and Congress — in bloody exchanges at Sirsita village in Birbhum district and Uttarpara in Murshidabad district, leaving nearly a dozen people injured.
Barely 72 hours after the Trinamool goons attacked the BJP workers at Imadpur under Parui police station for attending a public rally addressed by State BJP president Rahul Sinha, clashes erupted once again on Saturday in a nearby village Sirsita — formerly a Trinamool stronghold — where the supporters of the two parties were seen confronting each other with bombs and brickbats for hours till the police arrived.
The violence soon spread to other villages with both sides “hoarding materials for self-defence,” a local school teacher said, adding that “people are fleeing the villages in fear.”
Though no one was officially reported to have been injured and both the parties are blaming one another for initiating the clash, some of the people reportedly received splinter injuries but were taken away by their supporters so as to evade arrest.Sirista has about 1,200 voters, equally divided between the two parties.
Meanwhile in the second incident, the Trinamool Congress and the Congress clashed with each other at Uttarpara near Behrampore — the district headquarters of Murshidabad — over the control of a local party office leaving nine people injured.People were seen chasing each other with revolvers, hurting a policeman, the official body guard of District Board Chairman Silajitya Halder.
About the Sirista incident, Abhijit Mandal, a local Trinamool worker claimed, “The BJP attacked us first to avenge Wednesday’s incident. They were trying to stop the Trinamool men from joining the rally of district party president Anubrata Mandal leading to the clashes.”However, the BJP workers said the attack was initiated by the Trinamool men, who lobbed bombs from their party procession. “A three-day-old baby received splinter injuries from one such bomb,” they alleged.
Rahul Sinha, meanwhile, called Birbhum the fast emerging “second Nandigram” of Bengal. “It is clear from what has been happening there that the Trinamool Congress and the police are jointly trying to capture villages at the bayonet-point.” The BJP would take up the issue with the Governor seeking his intervention.
Meanwhile in Uttarpara, Congress MP Pradip Bhattacharya demanded immediate deployment of Central forces in Birbhum saying, “Only the paramilitary can stop this violence.”
The place of the clash was a few metres away from the residence of district Trinamool president Mannan Hussein, a two-time Congress MP who joined Trinamool after he was defeated in the May 2014 general elections.