The body of BJP youth front leader Arjun Chaurasia was found hanging in Kolkata’s Kashipur on Friday morning, hours before Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s visit to the city.
The body was recovered from an abandoned house in Kashipur Railway Quarter. However, no suicide note was found in the house. Preliminary details suggest it appears that the murder was planned.
Murder charges have been filed by the family. The family alleged that the BJP Youth Front leader was being threatened since the Assembly elections.
Five hours after the body was recovered, it was sent to RGK Medical College Hospital for post-mortem.
Following the incident, Union Home Minister Amit Shah cancelled all welcome events planned for him in the city. He met the family of the deceased in Kashipur.
“BJP worker Arjun Chaurasia was politically murdered. BJP demands CBI inquiry into the incident. BJP neither fears nor believes in the politics of violence. TMC is conspiring to create an atmosphere of fear”, said Shah.
“According to his family, he was brutally murdered. Yesterday TMC government completed one year of its term and today political murders have started in the state. We have come across many examples of political violence, retaliatory killings and selective targeting of activists of the Opposition in Bengal,” added Shah.
Shah said that BJP condemns the murder of Arjun Chaurasia and would ensure that the killer got the harshest punishment. “In no other province of the country, so many cases have been handed over to the CBI, but in Bengal it did. This shows that even the court doesn’t trust law and order and the police of West Bengal. Union Home Ministry has taken cognizance of the incident and has sought a report from the West Bengal government,” added Shah.
BJP vice-president Dilip Ghosh said, “This (BJYM worker’s murder) is a pre-planned strategy to disturb and threaten our workers. Our worker Abhijit was killed on 2 May last year and 60 murders took place since then. Nobody has been punished, no chargesheet has been filed…It can’t be solved without CBI.”
The incident caused a stir in the area and the situation became more heated, and clashes broke out between the supporters of BJP and TMC. The protesters were allegedly not allowing the body to be removed for post-mortem. Police, however, successfully dispersed the crowd. Kashipur-Belgachhia Trinamool MLA Atin Ghosh, who reached the spot along with local councillor Sumon Singh, said: “When an unnatural death occurs, police take the body for investigation and post-mortem. It’s a natural course of action. They have obstructed it with their bad intention of dirty politics. They’ve come from outside. So, we are strongly condemning it.”
The Calcutta High Court has allowed a PIL seeking judicial intervention in the death of Chaurasia. On Friday, lawyer Subir Sanyal filed a petition on behalf of the BJP seeking the intervention of the Chief Justice on an emergency basis. A division bench of Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj accepted the petition.
WITH AGENCY INPUTS