The Bharatiya Janata Party’s West Bengal unit has blamed the Trinamool Congress after the body of a party worker was found in a lake in Murshidabad district on Monday. The body of 54-year-old Dharmaraj Hazra was found in Shaktipur village with his hands and feet tied with a rope, the Hindustan Times reported.
Hazra had been missing since Sunday, ANI reported. A police investigation is under way.
“TMC [Trinamool Congress] shames humanity, yet again,” BJP National President Amit Shah said on Twitter. “Another BJP karyakarta killed in the most barbaric manner. In Mamata’s regime, West Bengal has become an epitome of violence and brutality.”
Gouri Shankar Ghosh, the BJP’s district president, said the ruling party’s leaders were eliminating BJP workers as they cannot stop its rise in the state. “Hazra was a member of the BJP’s 56 Shaktipur Mandal Committee,” he told the Hindustan Times. “He was receiving threats from Trinamool-backed goons since the panchayat elections for supporting the BJP. On Sunday, they killed him and consigned his body in a lake.”
The Trinamool Congress MLA from Shaktipur, Rabiul Alam Chowdhury, said “with certainty” that “no worker of our party are associated with it”.
The incident comes a month after the deaths of two people, who the BJP claim were its workers, in Purulia district. On June 25, the West Bengal Crime Investigation Department arrested a man from Purulia for his alleged role in the murder of BJP worker Trilochan Mahato. The party had alleged that Mahato’s killing was linked to violent civic body elections in the state in May.
A few days after Mahato’s death, the party claimed that one more worker had been killed in the district. The police, however, said it was suicide.
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