May 19: Mili Khatoon, 4, was playing in the shade of the verandah at home, oblivious to the poll turmoil outside, when a bomb ripped her apart in Murshidabad’s Talibpur village.

It was around one this afternoon and there were few people around as the heat was bearing down on the village in the Salar area, where the bitter rivalry between the CPM and the Congress peaks every time there is an election.

Mili’s father Alai Sheikh, a Congress supporter, was inside the hut after a hectic polling day yesterday. Suddenly, a gang stormed into the courtyard and started hurling bombs.

One of them landed on little Mili’s stomach, killing her instantly.

Looking at his dead daughter, Sheikh said: “They were CPM goons. They came to kill me, but got my daughter instead.”

Back in Calcutta, 250km away, the death of little Mili was reduced to cold statistics. She was merely one of “six more deaths” in the district, bringing the toll over the last two days to 17.

Neither CPM state secretary Biman Bose, who blamed the killings on a “mahajot (grand alliance)” of the Congress, Trinamul Congress and the BJP, nor Trinamul chief Mamata Banerjee, whose party claimed that the Marxists had “murdered democracy”, had even heard of Mili’s death.

The two parties railed against each other through the day.

The leaders busy in the blame game were also not aware of how Safiq Sheikh was killed today or how Milton Mondal succumbed to his injuries in hospital.

Inspector-general of police (south Bengal) Surajit Karpurakayastha, deputy inspector-general (Murshidabad range) Debashis Roy and district superintendent of police Basab Dasgupta today camped at Domkol, which has seen the most number of deaths in the district.

The government, however, accused the media of exaggerating the poll toll.

Home secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti said repolling for the second phase of the panchayat elections passed off peacefully.

“There have been no untoward incidents. The voting percentage is very high. The overall situation is very peaceful,” Chakrabarti said.

Inspector-general (law and order) Raj Kanojia said the ongoing panchayat elections have turned out to be “surprisingly less violent” compared with 2003.

“It was a pleasant surprise. These elections have turned out to be far less violent than the last rural elections. We had apprehended a much worse situation,” Kanojia said at Writers’ Buildings today.

Sixty people were killed in three days in 2003