West Bengal: Mamata Banerjee arrived at Birbhum village in West Bengal today afternoon, where eight people were burnt alive by unknown assailants in an attack believed to be retaliation after a local TMC leader, Bhadu Sheik was killed in a crude bomb attack.
“I never believed something so barbaric can happen in modern Bengal. Mothers and children were killed,” Mamata Banerjee said, surrounded by relatives of those killed, and other villagers. Announcing a financial aid of Rs 1lakh for repair and restoration of houses, she said, “ don’t want any excuses that people have run away. I want people responsible to be arrested and policemen to be punished for lapses. Witnesses must be given protection by police from possible attacks.”
Speculating it to be a bandwidth conspiracy, the police are directed to take ‘stringent action’ and probe the investigations from all angles. The incident has now seeded a political row, with oppositions attacking the CM indefinitely.
Ten children and two women, by conservative estimates, were bombed and burnt alive in retributive political violence in West Bengal’s Rampurhat, situated in the district of Birbhum. The dead belonged to a family whose men were local leaders of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, the attackers too belonged to the TMC.
The state administration, the police, the administration at the grassroots have all been compromised or accused in this zero-sum game of violence and revenge. West Bengal seems to be turning into a lawless hinterland that is run by a bunch of blood-baying political gang-men through fear and the barrel of the gun and the bomb.
Earlier on Wednesday, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdary in Lok Sabha wrote to President Kovind urging him to invoke Article 355 in West Bengal to ensure that the govt runs in accordance with the provisions of the constitution.