Police on Thursday arrested Raju Debsharma, the son of Sovarani Debsharma, a member of the Bahin Gram Panchayat in Bhain under the Raiganj police station in North Dinajpur on charges of stealing gram panchayat property worth more than Rs 5 lakh.

The stolen items recovered from the Trinamul Congress panchayat member’s house includes computer monitors, CPUs and printers which had gone missing from the computer room of the Bahin Gram Panchayat office since Wednesday. Following the recovery of the seized items, some Congress and CPI-M members of the area staged a demonstration, demanding the police arrest the gram panchayat member for further investigations.

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“After the theft on Wednesday, the Pradhan of the panchayat, Mojibur Rahaman, lodged a complaint at the Raiganj police station, within 24 hours, police raided the house of Sovarani Debsharma and recovered the swag. A laptop was also recovered from the house of another gram panchayat member, Kalyan Chowdhury,” a local said.

According to sources, Mr Debsharma had won the elections on a CPI-M ticket from the area in the last panchayat elections and had recently joined hands with the TMC. Meanwhile, Raju Debsharma, was produced in court on Thursday, which sent him to five days’ police remand.

“Raju Debsharma was arrested on charges of stealing public property. We have started investigations to find the truth and see if other persons were involved in this,” inspector-incharge of the Raiganj police station, Sukmanta Biswas, said.