Sunil Pathak, BJP booth president at Howrah Municipal Corporation, shot at; party blames Trinamool

Sunil Pathak, BJP booth president at Ward No. 40 in the Howrah Municipal Corporation, was shot at by an unidentified man on Sunday. Pathak has been seriously wounded and is admitted to Chittaranjan Hospital in Kolkata, the West Bengal BJP said. The incident came hours after BJP leader Mukul Roy and three other people were booked on Sunday in connection with the killing of Trinamool Congress MLA Satyajit Biswas in West Bengal's Nadia district. Of the four people named in the FIR, two have been arrested, an officer of the West Bengal Police told news agency PTI.

Biswas, 41, who represented Krishnaganj constituency in the state assembly, was shot from point-blank range by unidentified gunmen on Saturday evening inside a Saraswati puja marquee at Phoolbari area in the district bordering Bangladesh.

He was immediately taken to a local hospital where doctors announced him "brought dead". "So far, we have arrested two persons in this case and detained another three. A country-made revolver used to shoot the MLA has also been recovered.

Roy, a former TMC member of Parliament, joined the BJP last year after his relations soured with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Claiming that the attack was a conspiracy by the BJP, TMC secretary-general Partha Chatterjee said on Saturday that those involved in the killing will be punished after a full-fledged inquiry. He also said the saffron party was trying to create disturbances ahead of the Lok Sabha polls and resorted to "politics of murder" by singling out leaders having mass bases. The allegations were termed "baseless" by Roy and BJP state president Dilip Ghosh.