Bengal: BJP man booked for TMC worker’s murder found dead in Hooghly canal

His body was recovered from a canal at Kota village on Sunday morning and a probe initiated in the case.

According to police, Ghosh was one of the 27 accused booked for the murder of TMC worker Lalchand Bag in neighbouring Nakunda village on July 23. “We have been searching for him. Today (Sunday) some villagers saw a body floating in a canal and informed us. We recovered the body and sent it for post-mortem at Arambagh Sub-divisional Hospital. The body was identified as that of Kashinath Ghosh, a resident of Kota village,” said a senior police officer of Hooghly district.

A section of Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers claimed that Kashinath died due to overconsumption of alcohol even as the BJP demanded that his post-mortem be conducted in Burdwan to avoid tampering of the report.

Goghat’s TMC MLA Manas Majumdar said that Kashinath was a former TMC worker who joined the BJP on May 23.

“He died following overconsumption of alcohol,” Majumdar maintained.

Refuting the claim, BJP’s Arambagh organisational district president Biman Ghosh asked, “If he had died due to consumption of liquor, why were his hands tied and what about the injury marks on his head?”

According to the local BJP leaders, Kashinath left his house Saturday night to visit his in-laws in the neighbouring village.

“As he did not return last night, we started searching for him today (Sunday) and found his body. We suspect that he was beaten up with a bamboo stick and strangulated. We feel that his body was thrown into the canal after that,” said Biman.

The TMC, however, said they do not want to politicise this death.

“Any death is unfortunate. However, he was accused of killing our worker Lalchand Bag. He was killed for leading party workers to the July 21 Martyrs’ Day rally in Kolkata. However, our workers are not connected to Kashinath’s death. This could either be a fallout of a BJP infighting or he might have fallen into the canal as we learnt that he was drunk last night,” said TMC district president Dilip Yadav.

State BJP general secretary Sayantan Basu, however, said the party workers were falsely implicated in the murder of Bag. “The police are saying that Kashinath’s death is unnatural. There is a jungle raj in West Bengal. We are giving 72 hours to the police to arrest the culprits or else we will launch a massive protest.”

According to the local people, the saffron party workers staged a protest as the police recovered Kashinath’s body.
TMC MLA Majumdar said the BJP is making baseless allegations. “Let the police carry out an investigation and find out whether it is a murder or an accident.” — with PTI inputs