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2 men held for murder of Bengal BJP leader
The West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested two men in the early hours of Tuesday in connection with the murder of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Manish Shukla at Titagarh in North 24 Parganas district on Sunday night.
The West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested two men in the early hours of Tuesday in connection with the murder of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Manish Shukla at Titagarh in North 24 Parganas district on Sunday night.
The father of Muhammad Khurram, one of the arrested men, was murdered 10 years ago, said BJP leaders and police. Shukla, 39, an outgoing councilor of Titagarh municipality, was one of the accused in the murder case registered in April 2010. The charges against him were later dropped.
Sheikh Gulab, the second man arrested by CID, is suspected to have followed Shukla’s movements and passed on information to the hitmen.
In Shukla’s murder, nine people have been named in the First Information Report (FIR) on the basis of the complaint lodged by his father Chandramani Shukla, who is a doctor. The outgoing chairman of Barrackpore municipality, Uttam Das, and his counterpart in Titagarh municipality, Prashanta Choudhury, have been named in the complaint.
The two Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders denied the allegation, saying the BJP’s Barrackpore Lok Sabha MP Arjun Singh was blaming them because they campaigned to stop the BJP from making further inroads in the district before the 2019 assembly election in the constituency and 500 BJP supporters recently rejoined the TMC.
“There was an internal squabble in the district BJP unit because Shukla aspired to contest the assembly polls,” said Das.
Dismissing the claim, Singh said: “It is not true at all. In the BJP, top leaders select candidates. People like us do not take such calls.”
The CID is pursuing the “personal enmity angle in Shukla’s murder, but not ruling out the involvement of powerful people, an officer told HT on condition of anonymity.
Arjun Singh has alleged that the CID itself is involved in the conspiracy. “We have evidence that Shukla’s movements were monitored by some officers at the CID headquarters at Bhawani Bhawan in Kolkata on Sunday. We will move the Calcutta high court on Wednesday, seeking a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI),” said Singh.
Singh and Shukla both left the TMC and joined the BJP in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Singh made news by defeating TMC’s sitting MP Dinesh Trivedi in the Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat in 2019.
To prove Khurram’s connection with the TMC, Singh showed the media the accused man’s old photos with minister Bratya Basu, former minister Madan Mitra and Panihati legislator Nirmal Das. While Das denied having any link with the accused, Mitra and Basu could not be contacted despite several efforts.
Khurram’s father Muhammad Islam, who was a cloth merchant, was gunned down in April 2010 near Titagarh railway station.
“Khurram was very young at that time. Shukla was arrested and released after a few days. Police will find out whether Khurram is involved or not. I always told him revenge cannot be the answer to anything. Now that Shukla has been murdered our next generation will be in danger. There is no end of this,” said Khurram’s cousin, Raju Khan.
“Khurram, I and all members of our family are supporters of the TMC,” said Khan.
Attempts were made on Shukla’s life four times since 2009, the year he joined the ruling party, leaving the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He survived without a scratch in the attacks carried out in 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2018.
