A booth-level officer (BLO) was found dead in Mukundapur on Thursday morning. A BJP leader from the locality has claimed that the local Trinamool Congress councillor of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation exerted mental stress on him, which led to the BLO taking his own life.
The family of the deceased, however, did not lodge any complaint till late on Thursday evening, sources said.
BJP leaders circulated a purported audio clip that had the voice of two women talking — one of them claiming that her husband had died due to the pressure from a TMC leader. However, neither the wife of the deceased nor her family members could be reached to confirm the allegations.
Police said Ashok Das, 48, a resident of 15, Ahalya Nagar, Mukundapur, under the jurisdiction of Purba Jadavpur police station, was found hanging from the ceiling in his room on Thursday morning. He was taken to a private hospital around 9.40am where he was declared dead.
Police said Das was an assistant teacher at Baharu High School in Jaynagar, South 24-Parganas.
“He was a BLO in polling station number 110 at Chitkalikapur FP School at Purba Jadavpur,” said an officer of Kolkata Police.
BJP leader Sajal Ghosh, who circulated the audio clip, said Ananya Banerjee, the councillor from Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s ward 109, had threatened the booth-level officer against striking out illegal names from the SIR list.
“The BLO was under tremendous pressure. Banerjee used to threaten him. Now the ruling party men had surrounded the family of the deceased so that they cannot divulge anything but they will not be able to suppress the truth for long,” Ghosh said.
Refuting all allegations, Banerjee said: “The allegations are baseless. There are 57 parts in my area. Please speak to the other BLOs to check if I had put pressure on them in any way. This is political propaganda to malign me.”
Police said an unnatural death case has been started.