A young Trinamul Congress leader was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Khardah late on Friday.

The assassins shot at Ranajoy Kumar Shrivastava, 32, four times. The bullets pierced his chest and neck.

The incident occurred around 11.45pm when Ranajoy was going home in his car with party colleague Sonu Sahu.

Police and eyewitnesses said that five youths on two motorcycles intercepted Ranajoy’s car in Barapatti in Khardah. There was a heated argument, followed by an exchange of fists and blows.

“Ranajoy tried to escape when some of the youths suddenly pulled out arms and fired at him from close range,” Sonu said.

He was taken to B.N. Bose Sub-divisional Hospital in Barrackpore and then shifted to a hospital in Calcutta, where he was declared brought dead.

Ranajoy had joined Trinamul a few years ago and was once said to be close to party leader Manish Shukla, who was then with Trinamul and later switched to the BJP and was killed in October last year.

Trinamul insiders said Ranajoy was active in developing a support base among the Hindi-speaking community to neutralise the BJP’s influence in the Barrackpore Lok Sabha area.

The administrator of Titagarh Municipality and Trinamul leader Prasanta Chowdhury blamed the BJP for the murder. “Miscreants close to the BJP were threatening him for the past few days. We told the police to check,” he said.

The BJP’s Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh said: “The Trinamul leadership is trying to mislead people and suppressing facts. The murder was the fallout of their internal bickering.”

The police arrested five persons for their suspected involvement in the murder. The accused were produced at a Barrackpore court that sent them to 10 days’ police custody.