Police arrested the president of the Englishbazar town committee of the Trinamul on Wednesday for the murder of Trinamul leader Dulal Sarkar, nearly a week after the broad daylight crime.
The police had summoned Tiwari, along with his brothers, Birendranath, alias BN and Akhilesh at the Englishbazar police station on Tuesday for questioning in connection with the murder.
Police interrogated the three brothers separately. They interrogated the brothers until late into the night, after which they arrested Tiwari.
The cops have not yet clarified whether Tiwari was arrested on grounds of suspicion or evidence backed it.
The cops also arrested Swapan Sharma, who was accused of killing a cop in the past among several other crimes. The role of Sharma is unclear.
Chaitali Sarkar, a councillor in the Englishbazar Municipality and wife of the slain leader, had on Monday alleged a “deep-rooted political conspiracy” led to her husband’s murder.
The motive behind Sarkar’s murder is still unclear. Police sources say that, besides his political life, Sarkar also ran a plywood manufacturing unit, and they believe business rivalry may have been involved.
Tiwari, who is close to the state minister Sabina Yasmin, had a feud with Sarkar which came into the open during the 2022 civic polls. The followers of Dulal were accused of assaulting Tiwari and his brother Birendranath.
Sarkar, Trinamul councillor in Malda’s Englishbazar Municipality, fell to bullets of bike-borne assailants off the Malda-Kotwali highway in the town’s Jhaljhalia area on last Thursday morning.
On the day of Sarkar’s murder, the chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who was holding an administrative review meeting, had accused the police of negligence that led to Sarkar’s murder.
“The district police had withdrawn his security. He was an old party worker and had earlier faced attacks. It is because of the lapses on the part of the police that he lost his life,” the chief minister had said while the acting director general of police Rajeev Kumar looked on.
The Malda cops had earlier identified Rohan Rajak and Bablu Yadav to be the mastermind behind the murder. Both Rajak and Yadav are absconding. The district police have announced a bounty of Rs. two lakh for information on the whereabouts of the two fugitives.
Rohan, a resident of Jhaljhalia Railway Barrack Colony and Yadav, a resident of Mahananda Colony, both in Malda town, have been missing since Sarkar’s murder. It is suspected that the two had hired a shooter from Bihar to carry out the killing.
On the night of the murder, the police had arrested Englishbazar resident Tinku Ghosh and Mohammad Shami Akhtar from Bihar’s Katihar. Two others, Amit Rajak and Abdul Ghani, were arrested a day later.
