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Bengal CID trying to implicate BJP leaders in Shukla murder, party tells Governor
BJP leader Mukul Roy said the CID probe into the murder of partyman Manish Shukla was not moving in the right direction.
Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alleged before West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Sunday that the state police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is trying to implicate leaders from the party in the Manish Shukla murder probe.
A BJP team led by national vice-president Mukul Roy met Dhankhar in the afternoon at the Raj Bhawan and said the CID probe was not moving in the right direction.
Manish Shukla, 39, an outgoing councillor of the Titagarh municipality in North 24 Parganas district was gunned down by motorcycle-borne hitmen on the night of October 4. Five people have been arrested till Saturday but the CID and state government have so far made no official statement on the investigation. Police have also seized some firearms and three motorcycles.
“I have had personal experience with CID probes in Bengal. I have seen several cases in the past. CID investigations in Bengal never go in the right direction. We have reasons to believe that the CID is trying to implicate BJP leaders,” said Roy, who was a Trinamool Congress (TMC) Rajya Sabha member till 2017 when he left the ruling party and joined the BJP.
“BJP delegation led by National Vice President Mukul Roy @MukulR_Official demanded CBI investigation in the politically targeted killing of Manish Shukla. The delegation alleged CID @MamataOfficial was misdirecting investigation to falsely implicate political opponents in BJP,” tweeted Dhankhar after he met the BJP leaders.
Shukla, too, was a turncoat. He joined the BJP from the TMC after the saffron party won 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. One of these seats is Barrackpore, of which Titagarh is a part.
Barrackpore’s BJP MP Arjun Singh, who also switched camp from the TMC in 2018, has accused the chairpersons of two civic bodies in the district and TMC lawmaker from Panihati, Nirmal Das, of masterminding the murder with the help of some police officers.
“I do not want to react to what a strongman like Singh says. The police will get to the truth,” said Das.
The detective department of Barrackpore police is assisting the CID in the investigation. The police want to question a man lodged at Nalanda jail in Bihar, said an officer linked with the probe.
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. The outgoing chairman of Barrackpore municipality, Uttam Das and his counterpart in Titagarh municipality, Prashanta Choudhury, have been named in the complaint.
The two TMC leaders have denied the allegation, saying Arjun Singh is blaming them because they built up movements to stop the BJP from making further inroads in the district before the 2019 assembly election.
On Thursday, Priyanka Tibrewal, a lawyer, filed a petition at the Calcutta high court seeking CBI investigation into Shukla’s murder. The CBI probe should take place under the supervision of the high court, the petition said. It may come up for hearing next week.
