A BJP delegation met President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday and demanded dismissal of the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal, reaffirming its claim that party leader and MLA Debendra Nath Roy was murdered and seeking a CBI probe into his death.
The body of Roy, the MLA from Hemtabad in North Dinajpur district, was found hanging from the ceiling of a verandah outside a shuttered shop near his home on Monday, an incident police said was death by suicide but the BJP insisted was a case of “murder”.
The delegation, which included BJP General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, party MP Raju Bista and nominated Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, told President Kovind that Ray’s “murder” was yet another in a long series of “political killings” in the state.
The state’s ruling TMC urged the BJP to desist from engaging in “petty politics”.
“The BJP should desist from doing petty politics ov The state police has, meanwhile, detained one of the two people Roy had blamed for his death in a purported suicide note that was found in his shirt pocket.
A top state official said Roy’s postmortem report suggested that he died because of hanging and “no other injury was detected”.
BJP supporters clashed with police in several parts of north Bengal where the party had called a 12-hour shutdown against the “murder” of Roy and to demand institution of a CBI probe into his death.
“Democracy has been hanged in West Bengal. Political workers were being killed so far, and now elected leaders are being murdered and shown to have committed suicide. Anarchy prevails in the state, and its government has no right to be in power… We have demanded that the assembly be dissolved,” Kailash Vijayvargiya said after meeting Kovind.
The delegation also called on Home Minister Amir Shah whom it apprised of the development and sought a CBI investigation.
Vjayvargiya alleged that over 105 people associated with the BJP have been killed in the state in the last three years.
Bista alleged that the state police and other agencies were being used by the Mamata Banerjee government to “harass” her political rivals, and that a CBI probe was necessary to bring out the truth.
Dasgupta said “political murders” in the state have gone on for too long, and Roy’s alleged killing was not an isolated incident.
“We have seen a series of them… There is also harassment of political rivals in violation of all democratic norms,” he said.
Roy had won Hemtabad (reserved) seat on a CPI(M) ticket in 2016 but later joined the BJP. He had, however, not quit his assembly seat.
West Bengal Home Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay, however, told reporters that police, after going through circumstantial evidence and the postmortem report, suspected Roy’s death was suicide.
He said the purported suicide note blamed two people for his death. It had their names and mobile phone numbers.
“The death was due to the effects of hanging as noted above-antemortem in nature. Further information, if any, will be provided after the receipt of the chemical examiner’s report”.
“The police have examined the antecedents and activities of the two named persons whose photos and mobile numbers were also apparently given by the deceased writer. It appears that these two persons were involved in some para banking or money lending activities in the locality. The West Bengal Police are examining the context of informal banking,” Bandyopadhyay said.
He said the state government “is committed to ensuring transparency and comprehensive investigation of the incident” and will not allow any political or extraneous consideration inflauence the probe.
“The investigation has already been handed over to the CID. No political or extraneous consideration will be allowed to interfere with the pursuit of the truth through impartial investigation,” he added.
The BJP, however, remained insistent on a CBI probe.
“We don’t have faith in the state police and administration. They want to cover up the matter. The postmortem report called the murder a suicide. The state should either hand over the investigation to CBI or order a judicial probe under the supervision of a sitting judge of the high court,” said Rahul Sinha, a BJP national secretary.
Meanwhile, BJP supporters clashed with police in several places in north Bengal’s Cooch Behar and Siliguri districts and pelted buses with stones. Nobody was, however, reported injured.
Shops were closed in several areas and public transport was thin on account of the bandh lockdown in many parts of the state to stem the tide of coronavirus cases.
