West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday blamed the Modi government for the death of controversial Trinamool leader Tapas Paul.
Lashing out at the centre, Mamata Banerjee alleged that ‘pressure’ created by central agencies and ‘vendetta politics’ led to the death of Trinamool Congress leader and actor Tapas Paul.
“Central government’s pressure has claimed so many lives. Three people died due to this pressure by the agencies. Sultan Ahmed (former TMC MP), TMC MP Prasun Banerjee’s wife passed away and now Tapas Paul,” said Banerjee.
“People are being jailed but central agencies have not been able to prove their involvement or conclude what crime they committed. If someone commits a crime, they must face action. But we still don’t know what crime did Tapas Paul and others commit,” she added.
Banerjee also alleged that another TMC leader Sultan Ahmed had also died of cardiac arrest as he was under stress after being named an accused in the Narada tapes scandal of 2017.
Paul, a two-term former MP, died at the age of 61 in Mumbai on Tuesday after a heart attack. Tapas Pal had been a Member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from the Alipore constituency.
In 2016, Pal was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for his alleged involvement in the Rose Valley Chit-fund scam. The Ponzi scam had collected over Rs 10,000 crores as deposits from people in West Bengal, Tripura and Odisha.
The Bengali actor-politician was a board member of Rose Valley Marketing India Ltd and Idea Projects Ltd – two companies of the group – for brief periods over two financial years since 2009. Tapas Pal was granted bail after 13 months in imprisonment. Following his release, he had retired from active politics and refused to contest elections.
Paul had once threatened to get CPM workers killed and have their women raped if any TMC worker was attacked.