Student lynching gets political colour as Cong, BJP leaders pay visits

The unfortunate death of the 23-year-old ITI student took a political turn on Thursday with Congress and BJP leaders visiting the house of the victim and giving assurance of help to get justice.

It may be recalled that the victim Kaushik Purakayat was beaten to death on the mere suspicion that he had stolen a buffalo at Harindanga Dakshinpara near Diamond Harbour in South 24-Parganas.

On Thursday morning Roopa Ganguly, BJP candidate from North Howrah Assembly constituency, and some other leaders of the party went to the house of the victim and spoke to his mother. The victim’s mother was in tears with a photograph of her son in her hand. She told that her son never used to get involved in any trouble and he was mercilessly beaten to death for no reason.

It may be mentioned that the victim’s family members had lodged FIR against 10 persons including two women. Subsequently, the police had arrested four persons in connection with the murder of the youth and all were remanded in the custody of the police for 13 days. According to a senior police officer, all necessary steps had been taken to arrest the prime accused Tapas Mallick.

Though the local people claimed that the police were not arresting him purposely, but the police officer said that they will arrest him without seeing “any colour”. Moreover, two persons Bikash Mistry and Ajay Banik were arrested on Wednesday on charges of ransacking the houses of the accused. Both were remanded in the custody of the police for 8 days.

Ganguly later said that it would not be right to continue to blame the police repeatedly. “Everyone must keep patience as the police are trying their best to arrest the accused and we are expecting that the culprits will get arrested by Friday morning,” Ganguly said.

Later, representatives of Congress including the party’s nominee from Amta Asit Mitra met the victim’s family members. They also assured all help to the victim’s family members. However, some villagers have raised question on the visit of the political leaders at the house of the victim. They maintained that the politicians start pouring in to a place whenever a major incident takes place. It would have been better if they would have given the same effort in assisting the government to further improve the law and order system.

The police pickets were being posted in the villages and houses of most of the accused were locked from outside. A mob had damaged the houses on Wednesday. Thus additional policemen were posted so that nothing got stolen from the houses and no one tries to cause further damage.