West Bengal blast linked to 'internal feud' in Trinamool, say railway officials
The incident took place on Wednesday evening at the Nimtita Railway station. West Bengal minister Jakir Hossain and some other people were injured in the bomb blast.
The bomb blast at a railway station in West Bengal, in which a state minister and other people were injured, was a result of internal feud among the cadres of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), people in the railways ministry who are aware of the investigation said on Thursday.
Investigation underway at Nimtita railway station in Murshidabad on Thursday. (ANI Photo)
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They also ruled out the terrorism angle, also pointing towards the political rivalry between TMC and Communist Party of India (CPI). They said that the West Bengal Police had carried out lathicharge at CPI cadres who took out a rally last week in which one of the protesters died leading to tension in the area.
Hossaid had filed a police complaint in 2017 against two TMC members who were giving him death threats, the people cited above said on condition of anonymity, adding that the West Bengal government should tighten the law and order situation in the state.
They also said that the resulting chaos may disrupt the train operations and result in inconvenience to the general public.
The incident took place on Wednesday evening when Hossain was at the Nimtita Railway station to board the train for Kolkata. TMC leader and Bengal minister Firhad Hakim claimed that around 26 party cadres, including Hossain, were injured in the incident and 14 of them are serious.
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Hossain was shifted to a hospital in Kolkata where he remained in the intensive care unit. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee visited the hospital to meet him.
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Hossain was shifted to a hospital in Kolkata where he remained in the intensive care unit. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee visited the hospital to meet him.
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She said that the bomb blast is "part of a conspiracy", adding that Hossain was asked by "some people" were pressurising him to join their party. The blast comes at a time when West Bengal is preparing for Assembly elections in April-May.
The chief minister announced a compensation of ₹5 lakh for those seriously injured in the explosion and ₹one lakh for people who received minor injuries.
The state government has handed over the probe in the case to the CID.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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