A police jeep in flames at Kaligunj. (Palash Debnath)

Krishnagar, Aug. 1: A woman was allegedly kicked to death by police looking for farmers cultivating poppy in a remote Nadia village in the dead of the night.

When the police knocked on Asgar Ali Sheikh’s door around 2.30am today, it did not open immediately.

His wife Aduri opened the door 10 minutes later after the police kept knocking. The police pounced on Asgar, shaking in fear in a corner of the room, and tried to drag him away but Aduri stood in the way.

A policeman kicked her in the abdomen to clear the way. She slumped to the ground and passed out.

The police neither took Asgar into custody nor his wife to hospital. They simply walked out the house and went knocking at another farmer’s door at Hatgobindapur village in Nadia’s Kaligunj, about 150km from Calcutta.

Stunned and scared, Asgar did not react for some time. After he felt that the police had move away, he called other villagers.

Aduri’s brother Asrafuddin said: “My sister had pleaded with the police that her husband was not guilty. But an officer kicked her in the abdomen. The policemen fled the scene after she fell unconscious.”

As the villagers took Aduri, 38, to the local health centre, Asgar fled, fearing that the police might target him again.

Their son Jamiuddin, 20, a farm labourer, was in a room on the other side of the courtyard. “I was too scared to come out. I rushed to my parents’ room after the police left. My mother was lying unconscious,” he said.

Asrafuddin, a Congress gram panchayat member, has lodged a complaint with the police accusing them of killing his sister.

But the complaint is not being treated as an FIR yet.

“We are waiting for the post-mortem report. If it suggests that the woman died of injuries that suggest assault, we will start an investigation,” said Nadia superintendent of police H.K. Kusamakar.

The officer added that two farmers were picked up from Hatgobindapur during the raid last night.

Villagers accused the police of being “callous and cruel”. Aduri had apparently been suffering from a heart ailment for some time.

Nearly 1,000 people blocked National Highway 34 at Kaligunj and fought with baton-wielding policemen, who tried to disperse the mob. A police jeep was torched and a roadside outpost was ransacked.

Reinforcements from neighbouring police stations were brought in and a baton charge was ordered. The police denied allegations of firing to drive the villagers away.

“We have arrested five persons for the violence,” the SP said.

Acting on a tip-off that some villagers were cultivating poppy to make brown sugar, a team led by Kaligunj police station officer-in-charge Suman Chatterjee had raided Hatgobindapur.

Poppy cultivation is banned in Bengal but a section of farmers in Nadia has been growing it. Poppy can be used in making brown sugar, heroin and morphine.

The Telegraph had reported last month how the CID had unearthed a heroin-manufacturing unit on a paddy field in Nadia.

Last year, it was reported how many government school teachers and employees were cultivating ganja (cannabis).

Superintendent Kusuma-kar said about 30 people had been arrested from Hatgobindapur and its neighbouring areas in the past year for allegedly cultivating poppy and cannabis.