Lawyers of three of the four men who have been arrested and charged with the murder of Susanta Mandal, at a liquor store in Dhakuria on Sunday, said that only one person assaulted the victim and the remaining three had nothing to do with the death in the Alipore court on Monday.
Susanta, 47, was allegedly beaten to death outside the off-shop in Dhakuria on Sunday afternoon after an altercation between him and one or more employees of the shop over payment.
The owner of the shop who was also present at the store the incident happened has also been arrested.
“Every death is unfortunate. There was a small dispute over the payment of a change of Rs 5. Tinku (Prabhat Dutta) came out and assaulted the man who was in an
intoxicated condition. My clients had no role in that,” said the lawyer who was representing two of the accused men — Prasenjit Baidya and Amit Kar.
The lawyer who was representing the owner of the shop Debojyoti Saha said: “Even if we agree to the fact that there was an altercation between a customer and an employee, that does not mean that the owner of the shop should be held responsible for an act by the employee. My client is innocent.”
Dutta, the main accused, did not have a defence lawyer.
Chief public prosecutor Sourin Ghosal countered
the submission of the defence lawyers and said it was too early to rule out any possibility before a proper investigation.
“The defence has made the plea that one of the accused is the owner and has no role in the incident. But what if there was an old enmity between the owner and the victim and if he had hired his employees to assault the victim? All this needs to be investigated before coming to any conclusion,” Ghosal said.
Hearing both sides, the court remanded the four accused in police custody till August 5.
A purported CCTV footage shows a man resembling Dutta assaulting a man resembling the victim with blows and punches.
Susanta, the father of two, who was the leader of a taxi union affiliated to the ruling party, had gone to purchase liquor from the shop and had apparently got engaged in an altercation with one or more employees of a liquor shop named Southend Stores.
The police on Monday examined an eye witness who was also on the spot and seen in the footage standing at the counter when the altercation started.
Susanta’s body underwent post-mortem on Monday at the SSKM Hospital. The police said they were awaiting the report.