Never condoned firing in Farakka incident: Mamata

Stating that she was never in support of police firing, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said the Farakka incident, which claimed a life, was conspired to suppress the fire incident at Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital.

Banerjee, while addressing media persons in the State Assembly, said some people, including some Congress workers had gathered at Farakka and had brought with them stones from the railway tracks.

“I never asked police to fire, but they had fired to save themselves as they were gheraoed. Those men tried to kill the officer-in-charge of the police station,” the Chief Minister said.

Banerjee also raised the question as to why the body was found 200 metres away from the place of the violence and had multiple injuries “It is not right that political persons would agitate and the common people would die for that. We have taken initiatives to ensure uninterrupted power supply, but our workers were attacked,” she said, adding Rs two lakh will be given to the next kin of the victim.

Jamal Sheikh, the victim was shot in Farakka on Sunday. His family members were waiting for him when the new of his death reached their house. A police constable came to Sheikh’s residence and told his family that he succumbed to his bullet injury at the hospital.

Jamal, however, was not alone and several innocent villagers were injured in the incident. Some policemen, including top brass of the district police, were injured as well. After primary investigation, police came to know that miscreants were involved in Sunday’s clash. They targeted the police behind the villagers, who were agitating the power disruption.

Most of the injured were from Farakka’s Maheshpur, Nayansukh, Arjunpur and Mahadebnagar – which were facing power disruption for some days.

A general strike, called up by CPI(M), Congress and SUCI, to protest against the incident on Sunday, was a peaceful affair. The district administration and police took adequate measures to combat any untoward incident. Supporters of the strike tried to prevent state government officials from carrying out their duties, but police restricted them from entering into office buildings.