In keeping with his desire to become the “ground zero governor” in the backdrop of the panchayat poll violence, Governor CV Ananda Bose met family members of two BJP workers who were allegedly murdered by Trinamul Congress-sheltered miscreants in the run up to the rural polls in Cooch Behar on Saturday.
Governor Bose, however, decided to avoid visiting Gitaldaha village at the Indo-Bangladesh border in one of the remote corners of the district where clashes between the Trinamul Congress and the BJP on June 27 left one person dead and five others battling for life with bullet injuries.
Trinamul has blamed the BJP of leading goons into Gitaldaha and opening fire on its supporters which killed Babu Haque, a TMC worker.
The Governor did, however, visit workers of both Trinamul Congress and the BJP at the Dinhata sub-divisional hospital in Cooch Behar where they are currently undergoing treatment on account of injuries sustained during multiple instances of violence in the district.
Among those Bose met at the hospital was the injured wife of Tapas Das, the outgoing Trinamul panchayat Pradhan of Dinhata Block II, who was arrested by the crime branch of the district police on Friday in connection with pending warrants of six cases against him. Das’s wife alleged that the police manhandled her and her daughter and ransacked her house under the pretext of conducting searches after the leader’s arrest.
Guv CV Ananda Bose meeting family members of panchayat poll violence victims in Cooch Behar. Telegraph picture
Earlier, Bose met family members of murdered local BJP leader Prasanta Basunia in Dinhata. Basunia died instantly after two unidentified criminals stormed into his house on the afternoon of June 2 and shot him from close range. The BJP blamed the Trinamul for the crime.
Basunia’s kin broke down before the Governor during his visit to the family and the victim’s parents demanded a CBI probe into the murder.
Later, Bose visited the family of BJP worker Shambhu Das in the neighbourhood Tiadaha village. The blood-soaked body of Das, brother-in-law of a BJP Gram Panchayat candidate, was recovered from a jute field close to his home with multiple stab wounds on June 18. His family members had alleged that the victim was forcefully lifted from outside his house and murdered following multiple threats the family had received from the TMC after one of its members filed her nomination in the BJP ticket.
Local MP and junior Union minister Nisith Pramanik called on Governor Bose at the Cooch Behar circuit House on Saturday morning and alleged that the district police were tacitly supporting violence in the region unleashed by the Trinamul Congress.
Bose also granted audience to a group of six local BJP MLAs who alleged that police kept picking up BJP workers despite TMC unleashing violence. Local candidates of the CPI-M and Congress also met the Governor.
Bose, who is currently touring various districts of north Bengal, had said in Siliguri on Thursday that he would like to go to the field, interact with the victims and gain first-hand knowledge of the ground situation on the eve of the rural polls. He maintained that he found law and order reports coming from different pockets of the state “very very disturbing”.
Besides setting up a control room at the Raj Bhavan to listen to violence-related complaints, Bose has also been accepting calls directly from violence victims. Prior to his north Bengal tour, he also visited Bhangar and Canning areas of South 24-Parganas in the aftermath of political violence which rocked those areas during the panchayat nomination filing phase.