Two Trinamul Congress leaders were killed in north Bengal on Tuesday night as the spate of violence following the counting of votes continued unabated in the region.

Deepak Roy, 32, a vice-president of the Trinamul Youth Congress’s Alipurduar 1 block unit and a resident of Mathura, was killed when he was returning home from a wedding party.

When a car carrying Roy and five of his friends reached near a stone crushing unit around 11.30pm, they found that the road had been blocked with a tractor. Before Deepak and his friends could gauge what was happening, men carrying weapons circled the car and attacked them.

“His friends somehow got out of the vehicle and fled. The attackers, who we suspect were BJP workers, caught hold of Deepak. They rained blows on him and repeatedly stabbed him. When he collapsed, the assailants fled,” said Mridul Goswami, the Alipurduar district Trinamul president.

After some time, the friends returned and found Roy bleeding. They rushed the youth leader to a nearby health centre in Panchkelguri where doctors pronounced him dead.

Roy, Trinamul leaders said, was also a booth committee president of the party in the block.After the murder, a group of villagers came out of their homes and went on the rampage at the stone crushing unit which they alleged was owned by some of the attackers. The villagers also torched an excavator parked at the spot.

Police reached the spot and brought the situation under control. “Three persons have been arrested. Our officers are in search of some others,” said Anindya Bhatatcharjee, the inspector in charge of Alipurduar police station.

District BJP leaders, however, denied the charges. “We do not support such acts. It is an unfortunate incident but seems to be the fallout of a fight between two lobbies of Trinamul. Police should find out the truth,” said Gangaprasad Sharma, the district BJP president.

In Cooch Behar, Shahinur Rehman, 32, a Trinamul leader at Chilakhana in the Tufanganj subdivision, was hacked to death on Tuesday night.

Sayra Bibi, his sister who is also a member of Tufanganj 1 panchayat samiti, said a group of BJP workers had attacked Trinamul supporters at Chilakhana on Tuesday evening. After the incident, Shahinur and Prasenjit Saha, another Trinamul worker, went missing.

Later at night, Prasenjit was found near a local club. He suffered serious injuries and is under treatment at a private nursing home in Cooch Behar.

“However, we could not locate my brother. This morning, we found him dead in a corn field. He was hacked with sharp weapons. A group of anti-socials backed by the BJP were involved in the incident,” said Sayra.

Local people torched a motorcycle and demonstrated to protest the violence. Tufanganj police and central forces arrived and brought the situation under control.

Rabindranath Ghosh, a former minister and the defeated Trinamul candidate of Natabari Assembly seat — the locality comes under Natabari — reached the spot. He spoke to local people and requested the police to nab the killers.

“Ever since the BJP won the Natabari seat, leaders and workers of the party have been perpetrating violence and attacking our supporters. Police should take stringent action,” said Ghosh.

Sanjoy Chakraborty, a district general secretary of the BJP, denied the charges.

Senior police officers said two men had been arrested in connection with the incident.

“In the past few days, there were some violent incidents in the district. We are taking all necessary steps to prevent violence. A section of people is circulating fake messages to foment tension. Residents of the district should not pay heed to the messages and maintain peace,” said Cooch Behar district police chief Debasish Dhar.

State police and central force personnel have been posted across the district to prevent any further breach of peace, he said.