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Vijayvargiya, Menon among 24 BJP leaders booked in Bengal for agitation amid Covid-19 pandemic
Left party, rights group condemn the use of purple dye in water cannon.
As many as 24 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, including national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and national secretary Arvind Menon, have been booked by the Kolkata Police for violating Central guidelines on gatherings and political rallies during Thursday’s mega agitation amid Covid-19 pandemic.
Organised by the party’s youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the agitation witnessed pitched battles between the police and the party workers in parts of Kolkata and Howrah. The BJP leaders were also charged with destroying public property and violating prohibitory orders under Section 144 CrPC, said Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh.
“This is nothing new for us. Police in this state has brought around 30,000 false charges against hundreds of our workers and leaders in recent past. We will fight it out in court. We condemn the manner in which the police attacked us yesterday. Neither democracy nor this government can be saved with such tactics,” said Ghosh.
He claimed that the BJP workers were attacked without any provocation. “The police are behaving like Trinamool Congress cadres,” he said.
Ghosh led a silent march in the heart of Kolkata on Friday evening in protest against the police action. More than 200 BJP workers took part in it. Around the same time, a candlelight march was organised at Titagarh in the North 24 Parganas district by Barrackpore Lok Sabha MP Arjun Singh in demand for a CBI probe into the murder of BJP leader Manish Shukla on Sunday.
The Centre has banned gatherings and political rallies having more than 100 people under the National Disaster Management Act in view of the Covid-19 pandemic. The BJP and the BJYM claimed that more than one lakh people from Kolkata and adjoining districts took part.
Also read: Video of Sikh man’s turban being pulled at BJP’s Kolkata march sparks outrage
The BJYM organised the ‘Nabanna Chalo’ (march to Nabanna) programme to raise its voice on issues ranging from alleged lack of employment opportunities in Bengal to law and order problems. BJP and BJYM leaders claimed that around 1,500 workers were injured during baton charge by the police who stopped them from moving towards Nabanna, the state secretariat in Howrah, violating prohibitory orders.
Ghosh alleged that the police hurled crude bombs at BJP workers from a house in Howrah. The state police tweeted that the policemen seen in a video circulated by the BJP were throwing tear gas grenades. “This is a lie. Two BJP workers suffered bomb injuries at that spot,” said Ghosh.
Interestingly, the BJP’s allegation - that a strong chemical was used by the police in the purple water that was sprayed on the agitators on Thursday - found support from its rivals.
BJYM national president and Lok Sabha MP from Bangalore South, Tejasvi Surya said on Thursday he will urge the Centre to probe the matter.
On Friday, the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), the state’s most prominent human rights group that has targeted the BJP on various issues in the past, moved the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on this issue.
“This use of coloured dye to mark the protesters is a crude violation of human rights by the government of West Bengal. International human rights movement since long opposed this type of coloured identification and division of masses by colour marking and use of colour dye in water cannons for identification or for any reasons cited,” Ranjit Sur, vice-president of the APDR wrote to the chairman of the NHRC.
“Moreover the colours used in the cannons are not at all good for human use and contain lead particles which are poisonous. This type of colour dye develops health issues when in contact with human bodies. So in all respects, it is a violation of human rights of citizens,” wrote Sur.
The Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), a partner in the Left Front, also condemned the use of the purple dye.
“The BJP workers might have been unruly but all this might not justify the heinous use of brutality in spraying methyl violet on the demonstrators. The West Bengal Police indulged in a similar manner of criminal offence as so frequently used by the fascist tactics of the J&K Police. The RSP strongly condemns such high handed and brutal acts of the state police,” RSP state secretary Manoj Bhattacharya said in a public statement.
