Amidst growing violence and tension ahead of the 25 November civic polls in Tripura, police on Sunday arrested West Bengal Trinamul Youth Congress president Saayoni Ghosh (file photo) invoking five sections of the IPC including attempt murder and provocation with intent to cause riot, police said.
Trinamul Congress leaders accused the BJP of continuously attacking the party candidates and workers and Tripura police of “bias and mute pectator” despite Supreme Court directions. West Tripura District’s Additional Superintendent of Police (Urban) B. Jagadeswar Reddy said that Ghosh would be produced in court here on Monday and police are looking for four of her party men.
He said that political workers, allegedly belonging to the ruling BJP, created trouble in a police station (when Ghosh and other Trinamul Congress leaders were holding meeting with the police) here and they would also be arrested. Reddy said that five sections of the IPC were invoked against the TMC’s youth leader. These include 153 (provocation with intent to cause riot), 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language), 307 (Attempt to murder), 506 (Criminal intimidation) and 120 (Concealing design to commit offence).
On Sunday morning, Ghosh was called to the East Women Police station after an FIR was lodged against her. The actress turned-youth leader accompanied by the Trinamul’s Rajya Sabha member Sushmita Deb, party general secretary and spokesman Kunal Ghosh, former MP Arpita Ghosh, Tripura TMC chief Subal Bhowmik and other leaders met Sub-Divisional police officer Ramesh Chandra Yadav. They inquired why Ghosh was called to the police station through a verbal intimation and not with any written notice.
When the TMC leaders were talking with the police in the East Women Police station, a large number of youths, allegedly BJP workers, created a bedlam forcing the police to disperse them. TMC leaders also alleged that the BJP workers damaged several of their vehicles and injured many party workers and civic poll candidates when the saffron party workers attacked in different places and houses since Saturday.
Deb said that despite the Supreme Court’s directives the police remained a mute spectator when the BJP workers have been indiscriminately attacking the candidates and workers and houses of TMC regularly. The top court following a petition from Deb earlier this month had asked Tripura police to ensure that no political party was prevented from exercising their rights to campaign, for the upcoming municipal elections, in a peaceful manner.
TMC’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee meanwhile, will head to Tripura on Monday. Banerjee on Sunday tweeted: “Tripura chief minister (Biplab Kumar Deb) has become so unabashedly brazen that now even Supreme Court orders don’t seem to bother him.”