Murshidabad triple murder: Governor ‘worried’, TMC sees ‘selective’ reaction

JIAGUNJ (MURSHIDABAD): Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar is once again locked in a war of words with the state government, this time over a brutal triple murder of an RSS sympathiser, his pregnant wife and their son two days ago.
Dhankhar said the murders were “reflective of intolerance and worrisome law and order situation,” prompting Trinamool secretary-general Partha Chatterjee to retort that the governor was “selectively reacting to incidents”.

Schoolteacher Bandhu Prakash Pal, 35, his pregnant wife Beauty Mondal Pal, 32, and son Angan, 8, were found brutally murdered at their home in Jiagunj on Tuesday morning. Their milkman discovered the bodies in a pool of blood when he pushed open their door after getting no response. The milkman claimed the assailant was still lurking there when he found them, and fled in the commotion.
At first glance, it’s unclear how much of a political angle there is to the murders. The state RSS said Bandhu was merely a participant at their weekly ‘milan’ programme for the last couple of months. Even the Murshidabad SP, Mukesh Kumar, ruled out any political motive, claiming that the victims’ kin told police that the family had no political affiliation.
The governor, according to a Raj Bhavan release, has expressed displeasure at the way the state and police have responded to the incident, and has taken the matter up with state DGP Virendra and chief secretary Rajeeva Sinha. He has urged police to probe in a “fair-minded manner with an eye to book the culprits, uninfluenced by other considerations”. The incident, he said, had shocked “the conscience on account of its enormity”.
Bristling at this statement, Trinamool has reacted sharply. Chatterjee said Dhankhar was trying to divert attention from BJP’s internal feuds. “The governor has been selectively reacting to incidents. He has been doing so for quite some time. An unfortunate incident having its roots in family discord is being touted as a political murder,” Chatterjee said.
SDPO Tanmoy Sarkar’s statement also pointed at the ‘family discord’ angle. “We have three primary leads,” Sarkar said. “One is a letter written by the wife, indicating a deteriorating marital relationship. The second is a possible family dispute over property inheritance between the victim and his step-brothers. Thirdly, a friend whom the victim had loaned Rs 6 lakh is untraceable for the past one-and-a-half months.”
The National Commission for Women (NCW) has also written to the state “to investigate the matter on priority and ensure the arrest of culprits immediately”. NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma said: “A pregnant woman gets murdered brutally with her two children — one born and the other still to be born — and the police don’t have a clue. This is not acceptable. I urge the Union home ministry to intervene.”
RSS West Bengal secretary Jishnu Basu expressed displeasure at the police. “The primary schoolteacher had been participating in our weekly ‘milan’ programme for the last two-three months. I am not drawing any conclusion on the cause of deaths; I leave it to the investigating agency. What surprises me is that the police have not been able to identify and arrest the culprits even 48 hours after the murders. As far as I know, the police called two of the victims’ family members to the police station for questioning but released them later. This showcases the sorry state of law and order in Bengal. We have taken up the matter at the all-India level and will do everything to ensure the culprits are booked,” Basu said.
Milkman Rajeeb Das was the first to spot the bodies on Tuesday. Around 11.30am, Das had pushed open the door after getting no response to see Bandhu lying on the bed in a pool of blood. According to what Das told the cops, he screamed, after which the assailant, who was lurking in a corner, escaped. The assailant appeared to have scaled the back wall and fled. The cops were informed after this.
The Pals had shifted to Jiagunj’s Lebutala in 2017. Bandhu, a physics undergraduate, had been active on social media, posting on Facebook even on October 7 after taking his son pandal-hopping. On the day he was found murdered, he had been to a local fish market and bought fish, locals claimed. Some of his older posts indicate anxiety, broken trust and people backstabbing him.
His sister Bandhu Priya said: “He had cut off links with the family and we rarely interacted. Of late, it had come to our knowledge that a friend of his had taken Rs 6 lakh from him and vanished.” Priya and her husband, Manoj Pal, denied knowledge of any political link. Tapan Mondal, Bandhu’s classmate in school and college, said: “He had an aversion to politics. He once talked me out of college union politics.”