Ex-MLA pulled out and shot

Nanoor, June 29: Alleged Trinamul Congress activists dragged a former CPM MLA who had been denied a ticket by the party in 2006 out of his house and shot him dead in Birbhum’s Nanoor this evening.

Some 200 people with guns, bombs, axes and rods marched into Ananda Das’s home and ransacked it as the blood-soaked body lay in front of the two-storey house.

His teenage daughter Chaiti fled through the rear with her three-year-old brother in her arms. She hid at a neigh- bour’s house in the absence of her mother, who was not at home.

The Class X student said the group had attacked a Citu office next door when her father went out to the verandah to see what was happening. “I told my father not to venture out and attract attention. Some of those on the rampage saw my father and one of them pointed towards him. Then they rushed towards our house,” said the girl, shaking in horror.

Das, 52, tried to run inside but in vain. The attackers beat him up and then pumped bullets into him. “He took four-five bullets and was killed on the spot,” said Birbhum superintendent of police Rabindranath Mukherjee, who was camping in the village tonight.

Das had been an MLA from Nanoor for 20 years until the party dropped him 2006.

Sources said there were allegations of his involvement in the alleged Nanoor massacre of 2000 in which 11 Trinamul supporters were killed. His suspected role in the incident may have been a reason why the party denied him a ticket six years later. Sources said the CPM had been trying to distance itself from Das.

But to many in Trinamul, he was the face of the alleged massacre. Like in most parts of Bengal, Mamata Banerjee’s party has been increasingly assertive in this Left bastion since the 2008 rural polls. In February 2009, five CPM activists were killed when the Marxists tried an armed “recapture” of nearby Papuri village. This February, two CPM workers were killed in neighbouring Palundi.

The genesis of today’s trouble lay in the murder bid on Trinamul supporter Samsul Hoda, 36, who is in hospital after being shot at four times.

The armed gang first raided the CPM zonal committee office. They hurled bombs and broke furniture. Then they targeted the Citu office outside Das’s house.

Chaiti alleged that the police station, less than a kilometre away, had not responded immediately to frantic calls. “They could not come in half an hour. My father was killed.”

When the police came, the attackers pelted them with stones. After rain drove the attackers away around 7.30pm, the police moved in and rescued four CPM workers who had been locked up in the party office. The SP blamed the stone-throwing for the delay. Two men have been held, he added.

CPM state secretary Biman Bose accused Trinamul of launching a “pre-planned” attack. The party has called a 12-hour bandh in Bolpur subdivision tomorrow.

Trinamul denied its role in the attack. “It is the result of the CPM’s infighting,” said its state chief Subrata Bakshi.