A 55-year-old Kolkatan who is a US national settled in Washington and had returned to complete the renovation of his ancestral house on Kankulia Road was allegedly thrashed by a local developer on Monday apparently because he was neither hired for the job nor paid the money he is said to have demanded.
Jishnu Nath arrived in Kolkata on January 17. His parents had left him the two-storeyed house at 161F Kankulia Road, in south Kolkata.
On Wednesday, he told this newspaper that he was abused and assaulted — one of the blows landed on his left eye — because he refused to pay money to the developer who had earlier expressed willingness to take up the job.
“A local promoter named Khokon Sardar had been harassing my labourers for some time. We have been renovating the house on and off since 2022. The promoter’s men have been disturbing the labourers and have been enquiring about me. I came to Kolkata a few days ago to supervise the work and was scheduled to return to the US soon,” Nath said on Wednesday.
“His men had called me several times saying I should hand over the renovation job to them. I refused.”
Around 12.30pm on Monday, Nath spotted some construction material stacked in sacks that were kept along the boundary wall of his house.
“I found out that the material was from a nearby construction site where Khokon Sardar was developing a building. I approached him at the site and asked him to remove the sacks from my property. At this he said, it was a petty matter and that he wanted to talk about something else,” Nath said.
Next, Sardar allegedly demanded money in the form of “chanda”.
“He asked for a chanda (subscription). I immediately refused. The moment I refused, he started shouting and hurled abuses at me. Then he hit me and my prescription glasses flew off. He then dragged me to the site where he was developing a building, a few yards from my home,” Nath recalled.
He alleged that Sardar called his men and instructed them to hit Nath. “His brother Bhailo Sardar hit me in my left eye. They screamed at me and said even the police would not be able to help me,” he said.
Nath dialled Rabindra Sarobar police station. Around 3pm on Monday, a team of officers went to his home.
Around 6pm, another police team took him to MR Bangur Hospital for a medical examination. After that, he was taken to the police station, where he lodged a complaint, based on which an FIR was drawn up against the Sardar brothers and others.
Bhailo Sardar, who allegedly punched Nath, told reporters on Wednesday morning that the dispute was triggered and instigated by Nath’s verbal abuses at him and his brother. “He (Nath) started abusing me and my brother even after we assured him that we would remove the sacks which were kept along the boundary wall,” Bhailo Sardar said.
The police said they had started an investigation. “We will share details once there is any arrest in the case,” said a senior police officer at Lalbazar.
A case under IPC sections on extortion, causing grievous hurt, wrongful restraint, criminal intimidation and common intention has been drawn up.
The local Trinamul Congress councillor (of Ward 90), Chaitali Chatterjee, said no one had reported the matter to her.
“I came to know about the incident only through the media. Although this has nothing to do with the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, I will enquire about it and ensure that peace prevails in the neighbourhood. Nothing of this sort has ever happened in my ward before. We need to find out why suddenly someone would hit a man just like that. The reason has to be found out. I am sure the law would take its course,” Chatterjee said on Wednesday evening.
The city has witnessed many such incidents where Kolkatans have been threatened or attacked over contracts for repair or demolition work.
Two years ago, two groups of men — both allegedly affiliated to the Trinamul Congress — had fought with rods and bamboo sticks at Lake Gardens apparently over a contract to demolish a three-storeyed building, two blocks away from the house of Trinamul Congress MP Saugata Roy.
In 2017, the family of then Trinamul MP Sugata Bose, grandnephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, had been threatened by a gang of bike-borne men while they were trying to carry out repairs at their ancestral home on Sarat Bose Road because they had not bought construction materials from them.