KAMALPUR, April 18 (TIWN): The scenario of 24 hours’ strike of Congress at Kamalpur turned to a glaring instance of cadre-raj. Around 10-30 am when police arrested the Congress picketers led by District Congress President Manoj Kanti Deb, and approached towards the prison van, then all on a sudden the CPI-M cadres led by CITU Divisional Secretary Subrata Bhattacharjee, Kamalpur LC Secretary Amar Bhattacharjee and former Kamalpur LC Secretary Birendra Kairi attacked on the Congress picketers with bamboo sticks and rods. This attack made three Congress picketers seriously injured and they got admitted in the BSM Hospital.

The Congress picketers were Mrinal Shabdakar, Prasenjit Chakraborty and Purnendu Bir.  During the entire callousness, SDPO Uttam Banik and OC Swapan Dasgupta were present on the spot with huge numbers of TSR jawans. But they failed to protect the picketers taken under their custody. In fact, the police showed no intention to maintain the law and order situation then.

In the meanwhile, when the correspondent of vernacular local daily Ganasambad Patrika Shasanka Sekhar Deb was capturing the entire happenings in his camera from distance, the CITU Divisional Secretary Subrata Bhattacharjee threatened him to stop capturing images. He also tried to snatch his camera.

However, the incident sparked resentment among the locale. People expressed their view that, after total collapse of 34 years’ long regime in West Bengal and the resulting alliance took the party in the threshold of a dilemma and today’s incident was just a desperate move to somehow get rid of the allegation of Congress inclination. But the role of police during the attack and later the standstill move in shifting the injured to the hospital, made it once again clear that, police completely became loyal to the ruling party shedding off minimum humanity and duty to the citizens at large.