A young BJP worker was allegedly killed by goons close to Trinamool in Nadia’s Kaliganj, an Assembly segment under the Krishnanagar Lok Sabha seat, on Saturday night.
The incident took place around 8.30pm, hours after the final phase of polling ended.
The slain BJP activist, Hafizul Sheikh, 28, lived in Debagram-Chandpara. He was shot at least thrice in the head from close range and stabbed when he was playing carrom with friends near a tea stall.
Around a dozen goons on four bikes arrived at the spot. One of them opened fire. The assailant stabbed him too, before fleeing the spot.
Sheikh, once a CPM supporter, had joined the BJP before last year’s gram panchayat polls, and played a key role in the Lok Sabha elections as well in Kaliganj, where the BJP’s popularity among the Muslim voters was poor.
Demanding a CBI probe into the murder, Joinuddin Mollah, Sheikh's elder brother, said: “My brother earned the wrath of local Trinamool leaders after he played a key role in convincing many Muslim youths to join the BJP.”
“My brother was trying to develop the BJP’s organisational base. Trinamool leaders could not digest the fact that Muslims were joining the BJP, but we could not imagine that they could kill him,” he said. “I demand a CBI probe,” he added.
Police have begun a probe based on a complaint lodged by the victim’s family, in which 12 people were named as suspects. Till Sunday evening, the police had detained one.
Nadia BJP leaders and the party’s Krishnanagar candidate, Amrita Roy, visited Sheikh’s home.
“It was beyond my imagination that joining the BJP could lead to such a predicament for anybody. I am deeply pained to witness this end of a dedicated party worker,” Roy told journalists after meeting the family on Sunday.
BJP insiders in Nadia said that lack of organisation in Muslim-dominated segments like Kaliganj, Chapra and Nakashipara was a worry, but things were looking up with some Muslim youths joining the saffron camp.
“Hafizul’s murder is a jolt,” said local BJP leader Arjun Ghosh.
Local Trinamool leaders called the murder the fallout of personal enmity.
