Tension is brewing in Canning, a part of the coastal belt in South 24 Parganas district in West Bengal following the murder of three influential local Trinamool Congress workers in broad daylight on Thursday morning.
While local Trinamool Congress leaders have accused the BJP of being responsible for the murder, circumstantial evidence points to infighting within the ruling party as the likely cause of the crime.
Three people were assassinated on Thursday morning while travelling to a meeting to discuss the upcoming Trinamool Congress annual Martyr’s Day programme on July 21. They were local panchayat member Swapan Majhi, 38, and local Trinamool Congress booth presidents Bhutnath Pramanik, 33, and Jhantu Halder, 33. They were intercepted by the assassins as they were travelling to the rendezvous location on two motorcycles, who first hacked the three before firing multiple rounds.
Pushpa Rani, the superintendent of the Baruipur District Police, informed the media that investigations are ongoing to determine the circumstances surrounding the murder and to apprehend the perpetrators.
However, a local police source claimed that it is clear that the murderers were waiting for the three victims right there because they knew exactly when they would pass through the scene of the crime. The motivation for internal strife gets more powerful after this.
At the same time, the statements given by a local Trinamool Congress MLA from Canning (West) assembly constituency, Paresh Ram Das to the police as well as to the media have picked holes on the infighting theory. “The three victims had the fear of being killed for quite some time. They came to meet me at my party office on Tuesday evening and expressed this apprehension. I assured them of making arrangements for their security. However, I could never imagine that their apprehensions would come true so early,” he said.
Questions are now being asked as to why security measures for them were not established despite the fact that the local MLA was aware of life-threatening situations.
Saokat Molla, a Trinamool Congress MLA from the nearby Canning (East) assembly constituency, asserted that the BJP was likely responsible for this homicide. They are attempting to get together some local anti-social forces to take control of the area because they have no organisation foundation there, he claimed.
However, the BJP leadership has dismissed the accusations and said that this murder was the result of disagreements between two factions, one of which had ties to Das and the other to Molla.
(with inputs from IANS)