In another incident of violence reported from West Bengal’s West Midnapore district, Trinamool Congress goons are accused of abducting a local BJP worker, assaulting him, and urinating on his face when he asked for water.
According to the reports, the incident happened on Thursday, July 13 when the BJP worker was employed as the polling agent for the recently-concluded panchayat polls. The TMC workers abducted the BJP worker and took him to the Garbeta office where he was tortured and humiliated.
The TMC party workers are said to have assaulted the BJP worker and urinated on him after he asked for water to drink. The victim was then admitted to a local hospital late on Friday evening. The victim is identified as Barun Ruidas, a Dalit.
The victim while in the hospital was paid a visit by BJP’s vice-president Samit Das where the former narrated his ordeal to the latter. “Trinamool Congress hooligans demanded money from our party worker to celebrate their victory. Being very poor, he refused to pay up which infuriated them. Then he was abducted and taken to a local party office. First, he was beaten up severely. When he asked for water, the inebriated assailants urinated on his face. We have already filed a police complaint in the matter. We will be going for a bigger movement on this issue,” Das was quoted as saying.
However, Trinamool Congress MLA and the party district coordinator in West Midnapore Ajit Maiti refuted the allegation and said that the election in the Garbeta area was absolutely peaceful. “We had organized victory processions in a limited and humble way to avoid any kind of tension. BJP is cooking up stories now to create tension in the area,” Maiti said.
A similar case was reported from the Sidhi region of Madhya Pradesh recently on July 5 when state police arrested one Pravesh Shukla for peeing on a poor tribal man named Dashmat Rawat. A video of the crime went viral on social media on 4 July, prompting the police to file a complaint and apprehend the former. Meanwhile, the state police investigating the case mentioned that the footage was one-year-old.
Later Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan apologized to the victim and washed his feet at his official residence in Bhopal. Dashmat Rawat also received financial support from the state government in the amount of Rs 5 lakh and another Rs 1.5 lakh for the construction of his home.