Kolkata: A 23-year old second year college student was battered to death on Monday by a mob which falsely accused him of stealing a buffalo. While the victim lay in a pool of blood holding on to his last breaths, his parents were made to sign an undertaking of payment of one lakh sixty lakh rupees as compensation.
Leading the lynch mob was allegedly a local Trinamool Congress gram panchayat member, Tapas Mullick, who is currently absconding.
On Wednesday, angry villagers ransacked Mullick's house and several other houses in the neighbourhood and set ablaze adjacent haystacks to protest against alleged police inaction to shield the prime accused.
Police resorted to lathi charge to bring the situation under control.
The incident took place in the Purbapara village of Diamond Harbour in Bengal's South 24 Parganas district, some 50 kilometres south of Kolkata, and has yet again highlighted the question of alleged deterioration of law and order under Mamata Banerjee's regime.
Only one of the 10 FIR-named people in the murder incident has been arrested so far besides three others who aren't named in the police complaint. Till reports last received, police still remain clueless about the whereabouts of the local TMC leader.
The victim, Kaushik Purkait, was a student at an ITI college in south Kolkata and was, along with his mother Chandra Purkait, visiting his aunt for a family function. That's when he was accused of stealing a sacrificial buffalo which the villagers had brought for local Kali puja.
Allegedly led by Mullick, the mob ruthlessly bashed up the student and even his mother and aunt while turning a deaf ear to their pleas of innocence. The student died on early Tuesday morning after he moved to MR Bangur hospital in Kolkata.
Eyewitnesses claimed that it was Mullick who forced Chandra to sign a compensation declaration before he let her take her son to the hospital.
The anger of the villagers spilled over when the victim's body was brought back to the locality for final rites. The locals alleged that the police allowed the accused persons to escape first before carrying out their inconsequential arrests.
The 'stolen' buffalo, meanwhile, was found in the neighbourhood. It had escaped on its own.
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