FIRs have been lodged against veteran BJP leaders Kailash Vijayvargiya, Dilip Ghosh and several others on charge that they took to violence during the party’s Uttarkanya march in Siliguri on Monday.
Contravening the order to not gather in large numbers, BJP workers breached several other prohibitions that were imposed under Section 144 during their march to Uttarkanya claimed the police.
Filing the FIRs at New Jalpaiguri and Siliguri stations, the police alleged that Ghosh and Vijayvargiya encouraged the party workers to create violence, break law and order, clash with traffic guards, disrupt government procedures and physically abuse police.
Hundreds of BJP workers and supporters marched towards Uttarkanya, the state government’s branch secretariat, on Monday, protesting the state government’s “misrule,” when police stopped them.
Either side of Uttarkanya on Asian Highway-2 at Tinbatti and Fulbari turned battlefield when workers of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) and BJP workers and leaders broke the first and second police barricades. Protesters also set fire on barricades.
Police used water cannons and fired several rounds of tear gas shells and threw stones to retaliate the protesters, even as the latter hurled stones at the police.
One BJP worker, named Ulen Roy, succumbed to injuries caused by pellets fired from shotgun. The West Bengal police claimed that the shotgun didn’t belong to the force and alleged that he was killed by someone from inside the protest march.
The state leadership of the hindutva brigade did not take West Bengal Police’s claim and asked “If not police then who?” The party attacked the police and said that it was them who fired pellets at its workers.
“There are 10-12 bullet wounds on the body of Ulen da. If not police then who shot him? We have always seen the police and goons standing together to attack us,” ABP Ananda quoted BJP state president in West Bengal, Dilip Ghosh, as saying.
On Tuesday, BJP’s national general secretary and party’s central observer in West Bengal, Kaliash Vijayvargiya posted a video of West Bengal Police allegedly firing pellets at the saffron camp in Siliguri on Monday.
In Vijayvargiya’s video, a police officer was seen preparing to fire pellets. However, it was not clear if the police was attempting to fire at BJP’s Uttarkanya rally in Siliguri on Monday.