Nearly 20 tourists vacated a resort near Madarihat in Alipurduar district after they were threatened and the property was vandalised allegedly by members of a Durga Puja committee over Puja subscription on Tuesday.

The Holong Eco Village Resort is located at Khauchandpara, which is around 10km from Madarihat. Madarihat is the gateway to the Jaldapara National Park, the largest habitat of one-horned rhinos in Bengal.

Sources said around 30 members of a Durga Puja committee at Khauchandpara had turned up at the resort on Tuesday and demanded a contribution of Rs 10,000 from the owner.

“They asked for Rs 10,000 and I urged them to accept a lesser amount. This left them irritated and they started abusing me and my family members who stay at the resort. The Puja committee members threatened tourists staying at the resort and asked them to vacate the premises immediately. I asked them not to behave in such a manner, but they went on ranting abuses,” said Biswajit Bhattacharjee, the resort’s owner.

According to him, the agitated youths left the place after some time. However, after 10 minutes, another gang, reportedly from the same Puja committee, reached the resort.

“This time, they started verbally abusing my family members, including my mother, wife and daughter. My family members had locked themselves in a room and the gang members went on berserk at the property. They broke my cellphone and damaged windows, wi-fi machines and furniture while asking each of the tourists to leave the place,” the owner added.

The resort had 18 tourists as boarders, mostly from Calcutta. They immediately checked out and left for Jaigaon, the town in Alipurduar district that sits on the Bhutan border.“They have threatened me that they will not let me run the resort here. My wife Swapna filed a complaint at the local Falakata police station. The tourists didn’t pay me as they couldn’t spend the night at my place,” the owner said.

None of the representatives of the Puja committee could be contacted. Kuntal Banerjee, the additional superintendent of police of Jaigaon, said: “We are checking the veracity of the complaint.” Stakeholders of the tourism industry have expressed concern over the vandalism.

“We had to bear huge losses in the past two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The industry has just started reviving. At such a juncture, this is an undesirable incident. Stringent steps should be taken against the attackers to ensure that no resort owner faces such a problem in the future,” said Biswajit Saha, the secretary of the District Tourism Association, Alipurduar.