A fresh row between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP erupted on Friday after a local BJP youth wing leader Arjun Chowrasia was found hanging in mysterious circumstances. This in the midst of Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s two-day visit of Bengal. Chowrasia, 27, was found hanging in an abandoned railway flat at Cossipur in north Kolkata.
Shah launched a scathing attack on the TMC Government saying it was worse than the Left when it came to attacks on the Opposition workers even as he sought a CBI probe in the case.
Referring to the Friday’s incident coming a day after the anniversary of Mamata Banerjee retaining power for the third time in a row, Shah said, “Yesterday the Trinamool Government completed one year in power, and the very next day they have resorted to the same culture of political violence and political murder. Whereever we go in Bengal find Opposition workers being attacked and murdered … now it seems that the TMC Government is worse than the Left regime.”
Asserting that this was a “political murder” the Home Minister said, “I
demand a CBI investigation into the case,” adding the Union Government
had already demanded a report on the Friday’s incident.
Reminding how the Calcutta High Court had ordered a series of CBI
investigations taking away cases from the hand of the State police in
a short span of one month, Shah said, “This proves that even the Court
has no faith in the police and the law and order situation of the State
Even as a large crowd of saffron workers gathered at the spot preventing the
police from taking away the body, the men in uniform had a hard time to
recover the corpse and sent it for postmortem.
According to family members of the deceased, the dead person was
receiving threats from the TMC men after the last year’s Assembly
elections. He and his brother were even forced to flee their
residence, BJP leader and advocate Priyanka Tiberwal said, adding that
the party has filed a petition in the court to get Chowrasia’s death
considered as death due to post-poll violence.
“This case should also be seen as one of post poll violence … and
should be clubbed with the other cases being investigated by the CBI,”
she said adding “Arjun was supposed to lead a procession of 200 people
in a rally of the Union Home Minister on Friday”. The Central agency
has already been investigating cases related to last year’s post-poll
violence that saw 57 people killed and hundreds of houses looted.
Reacting strongly to his comments TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said
If Shah had so much faith in the CBI then why was he not asking the agency
to arrest Bengal Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari, one of the prime
accused named in the FIR of Narada scam.
“Suvendu Adhikari is moving around with Shah then why his faithful
CBI is not arresting him as he has been named in the Narada payoff,”
Ghosh asked.
The TMC leader also wondered whether the autopsy of Chowasia would be
done properly at a hospital run by the Central Government after Shah
had already called it a murder.
“The same allegation we may bring on them asking whether the Centre
run hospital will perform the postmortem properly after Amit Shah has
called it a political murder,” Ghosh a former MP said.
Meanwhile, in a related development the Division Bench of Chief
Justice Prakash Srivastav on Friday directed the Kolkata Police
Commissioner to get the postmortem of Chowrasia be conducted at
Alipore Army Command Hospital after the family of the dead moved the
Calcutta High Court demanding the autopsy to be carried out by a
neutral agency.
The Court also directed the procedure to be video-graphed besides it
being supervised by a doctor each from the All India Institute of
Medical Sciences Kalyani and State-run RG Kar Medical College
Hospital.