Ahead of the upcoming State Assembly election, a BJP worker was shot at on Wednesday morning (11th March), in an area between the bus stands at Sridham and Gangasagar in South 24-Parganas, West Bengal. The victim, identified as 66-year-old Trilokeswar Dhali, was fired at by two bike-borne assailants, who immediately fled the spot.
Dhali was hit in the chest and collapsed on the road. Locals rushed him to Sagar rural hospital, from where he was later shifted to a hospital in Joka on the outskirts of Kolkata. The West Bengal BJP has held the ruling TMC responsible for the attack. Dhali’s daughter has also expressed the possibility of TMC members being involved in the attack on her father.
As per reports, Dhali earlier served as the secretary of the Mathurapur organisational district committee of the BJP. Recently, he started working as a party worker. Condemning the attack on Dhali, BJP leader Jagannath Chattopadhyay said the party would lodge a complaint with the Election Commission of India, demanding strict action against the officer-in-charge of the local police station. “He is in a critical condition. We will bring this case to the EC’s notice. Action should be taken against the officer-in-charge of the police station. Unless the EC takes action, the police will continue to play a partisan role,” Chattopadhyay said.
“There is no rule of law in Bengal. In the last few years, leaders and workers from the SC and ST communities have been killed in Bengal,” Bengal BJP president and Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya.
Denying the allegations against the TMC, party spokesperson Tanmay Ghosh said that an impartial investigation should be conducted into the incident. Meanwhile, the state BJP workers held a protest against the incident.
Notably, the Union Ministry had deployed 480 companies of the central armed forces in the state ahead of the elections, the dates for which are yet to be announced.
