Calcutta, May 15: Suspected members of a Naxalite-affiliated union barged into the office of the personnel manager of a jute mill and battered him to death after a meeting they were holding was disrupted.

A bleeding Apurba Roychowdhury, 55, of Titagarh Jute Mill on the city’s northern fringes, was declared dead on arrival in hospital. His wife and daughter live in Behala.

Around 6.30pm, about 100 members of the Naxalite-affiliated Sangrami Mazdoor Union had been holding a gate meeting at the factory to press for better wages and work conditions. The mill has nearly 2,000 workers on its rolls.

According to members of the union, about a dozen men, their faces covered with black cloth, suddenly turned up, broke the mike and tore the wires before fleeing. The union saw this as a “plot” by the management to disrupt their meeting with the help of Citu, the main union.

Furious, they marched to the personnel manager’s office, armed with sticks and iron rods, and stormed in, taking Roychowdhury by surprise.

“Union members accused Roychowdhury of disrupting their meeting. An argument followed and some of the workers started beating him up with the sticks and iron rods. As Roychowdhury slumped on the floor bleeding, others smashed the furniture and snapped telephone wires. The mayhem continued for about half an hour,” an official of Khardah police station said.

“We resorted to a lathicharge to disperse the union members. Then some of us took Roychowdhury, who lay unconscious in a pool of blood, to the nearby B.N. Bose Hospital.”

P.K. Tripathi, the additional superintendent of police, Barrackpore, said a murder case registered and 15 union members arrested.

Mill spokesperson Anjan Majumdar said he had informed the police earlier that the Naxalite union might create trouble over its demand for a wage hike. “Despite this, the police gave the union permission to hold today’s gate meeting,” he said.

The union denied a role in the killing, blaming “outsiders”. But spokesperson Sarmistha Roychowdhury admitted that some union members were angry after “Citu members” broke up their meeting.

“But our members did not enter the personnel manager’s room. Neither did they assault him,” she said.

Citu demanded “exemplary punishment” for the murders, saying it was “the handiwork of the Naxalites”.

In January 2001, Citu members had beaten to death two senior officials of Baranagar Jute Factory.