A local Trinamul leader and former councillor of Englishbazar municipality in Malda district and his alleged henchmen have been accused of assaulting a tribal schoolteacher after accusing him of stealing a bicycle in Malda town on Friday.

Sudip Tudu, the schoolteacher in his mid-thirties, has suffered serious injuries and is under treatment at Malda Medical College and Hospital.

The matter came into light on Monday after Tudu’s kin filed a complaint with Englishbazar police.

Leaders of various political parties, including some from Trinamul, have protested, prompting Paritosh Choudhury, the former Trinamul councillor, to go into hiding. Police are searching for him.

Sources said Tudu, who stays in Habibpur block of the district, had been to Malda to meet his relatives at Krishnapally in ward 3 of the town.

On Friday, after he left his relatives’ place, some local residents allegedly accosted him. “They started thrashing me. I had no idea why. One of them, who introduced himself as the former councillor of the ward, called me a thief. I had done nothing,” Tudu said from the hospital bed. He added that his relatives took him to the hospital.

As the news spread, the Left and the BJP demanded Choudhury’s arrest.

“The Trinamul leader intercepted and thrashed a schoolteacher in broad daylight without any reason. Shameful. Stringent steps should be taken against all the accused,” said Gobinda Mandal, the district BJP chief.

On Tuesday, representatives of All Bengal Teachers’ Association, the teachers’ front of CPM, met Tudu in the hospital. They threatened a movement if Choudhury was not arrested immediately.

District Trinamul leaders, when questioned about the attack on the school teacher, tried to distance themselves.

“Paritosh Choudhury is a former CPM worker and later joined Trinamul. Earlier, some other allegations were made against him but this time, he has crossed all the limits. The party will never stand by him and we want the law to take its own course,” said Krishnendu Choudhury, a state general secretary of Trinamul based in Malda.

Police officers of Englishbazar police station said they are in search of him. “We are working on certain inputs and hope to locate him soon,” said an officer.