Bengal Opp. leader: Give TMC activist security
In an unprecedented incident, Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly Surjya Kanta Mishra on Friday demanded security for Trinamul Congress activist Pratima Dutta and her family members. Her husband Tapan Dutta was murdered in 2011 in Bally in Howrah. Ms Dutta had been relentlessly seeking justice since. Recently her nephew Pintu Dhar was attacked with a chopper.
In a politically significant move, leading a Left Front legislative team, Dr Mishra visited the house of Ms Dutta, who is a Trinamul Congress gram panchayat member. “It is a strange situation. The persecuted family belongs to the same party to which its tormentors and the accused belong. We have not come here to score political points. We want to stand by this terrorised family so that it can get justice,” Dr Mishra said.
Significantly, while the Left leaders were inside the victims’ house, a large number of Trinamul Congress supporters with party flags protested outside. Dr Mishra said that Ms Dutta, her two daughters and her mother-in-law have been living in constant terror. “After she filed a petition in the high court demanding CBI probe into her husband’s murder, Ms Dutta has been repeatedly threatened. Her daughters cannot go to college. As soon as dusk descends they lock themselves up in their house,” Dr Mishra said, warning that if any member of the Dutta family came to harm, he would hold chief minister Mamata Banerjee responsible.
Complaining that after her husband’s death, she did not receive help from her own party, Ms Dutta said: “I wrote three letters to the chief minister expressing my desire to meet her but she did not reply. I went to meet the then law minister Malay Ghatak and industries minister Partha Chatterjee but they refused to meet me.” When her own party did not come to her help, she turned to the CPI(M). It is former mayor and CPI(M) leader Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya who is fighting her case in the court.
Tapan Dutta was an active Trinamul Congress and a green activist.
He earned the wrath of unscrupulous promoters because of his strong opposition to their plan to fill up a vast water body in Bally. On May 6, 2011, he was murdered after he refused to toe the line of the land sharks who allegedly enjoyed the blessings of local Trinamul Congress leaders.
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