For the second time in a week, large parts of Kolkata turned into a war zone as thousands of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters clashed with police personnel.
The BJP had given a call for ‘Lalbazar Abhiyan’ on Thursday to protest against the Trinamool Congress government’s high-handedness and false cases against BJP workers, which soon took an ugly turn, resulting in clashes with police. Hundreds of BJP supporters were injured in the violence.
Many senior BJP leaders, including party national secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya Rajya Sabha MP Rupa Ganguly and State BJP leaders Dilip Ghosh and Rahul Sinha and Locket Chatterjee, were arrested by the police. While the police put the number of agitators injured in the violence at around 50, the State BJP leadership claimed that more than 150 supporters sustained serious injuries.
Twenty-one police personnel have been injured in the violence. “About 141 persons, including senior BJP leaders, have been arrested and they are still in custody,” a senior police official told journalists. For several hours, centrally located areas—Tea Board, Pheras Lane, B B Ganguly Street and Brouborne Road— witnessed scenes of clashes between the police and BJP supporters. The agitators put a police vehicle on fire and attacked several other government vehicles.
Petrol bomb hurled
According to police, petrol bomb was hurled by protesters at Tea Board while people hiding in buildings near the Lalbazar police headquarters and travelling in a bus assembled as flash crowds tried to breach the security cordon.
While the police accused the BJP supporters of indulging in planned hooliganism, the BJP described the police action as violent and unprofessional and accused the police of colluding with “ goons of the Trinamool Congress”
