Durgapur, April 30: Trinamul Congress workers allegedly beat up a DYFI member in Durgapur when he refused to switch to the ruling party and threatened his elderly mother, a CPM leader, that they would set her house ablaze if she too did not follow the directive.
On Saturday, the Trinamul workers also ordered another woman owing allegiance to the CPM in the same locality to either join the party or sell her house and leave the area.
Prasanta Roy, the 37-year-old DYFI activist who had to be hospitalised after the alleged attack, said he was called to the Trinamul office at Benachity by local party leader Uttam Sarkar. “I refused to enter the party office and told Uttam and his aides that they could say whatever they wanted to outside. Uttam and around 20 of his aides came outside and beat me up with belts and sticks. They told me that I was being assaulted because my mother was a CPM leader. They said they wanted to free the area from the ‘pollution created by the CPM’,” Prasanta said.
After being kicked and punched for nearly 15 minutes, he slumped to the ground. Then the Trinamul workers allegedly hurled Prasanta’s bicycle at him, locked up their office and left.
Doctors said he suffered a head injury and prescribed a CT scan. “The back of my head and left ear are still paining. I can’t hear properly in the left ear,” Prasanta, who was released from Durgapur sub-divisional hospital this afternoon, said.
Hours after the attack, Trinamul workers led by Uttam went to Prasanta’s house and allegedly threatened his mother, CPM branch committee member Gayatri Roy, 60, that they would set her house on fire if she did not sever ties with her party. “They told me to either join Trinamul or sell my house and shift elsewhere. They threatened to set my house ablaze,” said Gayatri, a functionary of the CPM’s women’s wing.
“They also whitewashed the walls of my house, saying they had ‘booked’ them to write graffiti for the upcoming civic polls,” she added.
The Trinamul workers then went to the house of Champa Dey, 55, another CPM branch committee member, and asked her to either quit the party or leave the area.
Prasanta said neither he nor his neighbour, Champa, had mustered courage to lodge a police complaint. “The Trinamul workers led by Uttam threatened my widowed mother with dire consequences if we went to the police,” he added.
Prasanta said he was so “scared” that he did not send his two daughters to school today. “It is as if we have committed a crime by being associated with the CPM. Trinamul workers teased and taunted my daughter-in-law when she went to a nearby grocery shop today. None of us dared to venture out of the house after that,” Gayatri said.
Champa said: “I have been living here with my husband and two sons since 1989. But now, Trinamul workers are trying to hound us out of the area if I do not join the party.”
Uttam denied the charges and claimed a “conspiracy” had been hatched against Trinamul. “It is a conspiracy to malign Trinamul before the Durgapur civic polls. The people will give a fitting reply. No Trinamul worker beat up Prasanta. No one from our party went to the two houses and threatened the CPM leaders,” he said.
Let me explain at the outset that I am no CPM supporter and do not hold any brief for that party. I was one on the stronger critics of the party through our blog. However, when the party which claimed "poribortan" after coming to power, the above is not a good harbinger of change for the good of Bengal. They are following the same policy as the CPM. These are the very acts for which the CPM was thrown out. Mamta Banerjee is hastening towards her fall.
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