What was feared ultimately occured in West Bengal. Three days before the first BJP government was to be sworn in, top BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari’s PA was gunned down by professional sharpshooters.
The attack was meticulously pre-planned and efforts were made to remove all clues. The killers made a recce of the spot and the motive was to send a chilling political message.
Suvendu Adhikari said, the actual plot was to assassinate him, but the killers could not reach him and his personal assistant Chandranath Rath was killed.
He said, the murder could be a reprisal for Mamata Banerjee’s defeat in Bhabanipur constituency.
The victim’s mother demanded early justice and life term imprisonment for the killers. BJP legislator Arjun Singh named Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee. He said, Abhishek has gone berserk after the poll debacle and this murder took place.
Trinamool Congress has demanded CBI probe. The party spokesperson alleged, the Election Commission has failed to stop post-poll violence despite deploying huge number of paramilitary personnel.
TMC leaders said, their party offices and workers are being attacked and till now, three workers have been killed.
Suvendu Adhikari asked people to be patient for at least two days.
He said, “Once BJP government is sworn in, anti-social elements and mafia will surely have to worry. They will be ‘treated’ in the same manner as gangsters and mafia leaders were dealt with in Uttar Pradesh by Chief Minister Yogi’s police.
The murder of Suvendu Adhikari’s PA is a clear example of the extent to which professional killers have had their sway in Bengal. In spite of the defeat of Trinamool Congress at the hustings, criminals still roam fearlessly.
West Bengal has a long bloody history of murders of political workers. Five years ago, when TMC won the 2021 assembly polls, 31 persons were killed and there were 88 incidents of political violence.
In the last six years, Bengal accounted for 35 per cent of incidents of political violence in the whole country. This was the reason why nearly 700 companies of para-military forces were deployed in Bengal.
Though there was not a single incident of murder, firing or bomb blast during polling in Bengal, the murder of Suvendu’s PA is truly saddening.
Suvendu is right. West Bengal needs a Yogi model to crush criminal gangs. Fear of police must be created in the minds of gangsters.