Khejuri/Hooghly: Trinamool on Sunday blamed BJP for the death of a party worker in Hooghly and an incident of arson in East Midnapore’s Hooghly in which 60 shops were set on fire. BJP denied the allegations.Sharing a picture of a bloodied corpse on its social media handle, Trinamool claimed that the deceased, Sahadeb Bag, was a Nokunda gram panchayat member under Goghat-I block, and his death was an incident of post-poll violence.“How many more lives will be lost to political violence,” Trinamool asked on X, calling for those responsible to be “arrested immediately.”BJP’s Goghat unit denied involvement of its party workers and said Bag was killed for personal or financial reasons.A local police officer said Bag’s body was found in a field and cops were investigating what led to his murder, including business rivalries with regard to project tenders as well as political angles.Trinamool national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee alleged that the shops gutted in the fire in Khejuri belonged to party workers and that the act of arson was committed by “BJP-backed miscreants.”“Over 60 shops were torched by BJP-backed miscreants, destroying the livelihoods of innocent people overnight. Hindu-owned shops, Muslim-owned shops, it made no difference. This was not an attack on any one community; it was a calculated assault on Bengal’s social harmony, democratic fabric and the ordinary citizens who simply want to live in peace,” Banerjee said.“Bengal will never surrender to such violence. Those responsible for this shameful act must be identified and brought to justice at the earliest,” he added.He further described the incident as a “barbaric” and “calculated assault” on Bengal’s social harmony and democratic fabric.BJP MLA Subrata Parui denied the allegations levelled by Banerjee and said a gas cylinder explosion caused the fire. He called for a neutral probe free of political bias and said the focus should be on the plight of the shopkeepers who had lost their shops.
