Now, face of Nehru statue blackened

Incident took place in Bengal town

The blackened face of the statue was later cleaned by the Katwa civic body.

A statue of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in Katwa town of West Bengal was found with its face blackened on Saturday, the police said.

The blackened face was discovered in the morning by the locals, who then informed the police. Following this, Congress workers held a demonstration in front of the police station demanding immediate arrest of those responsible for the act.

A complaint was lodged by them, the police said, adding investigation into the incident was under way.

Chairman of the Trinamool Congress-run Katwa municipality Rabindranath Chattopadhyay condemned the incident and said the statue was cleaned by the civic body later in the day.

Subhashish Samanta, the secretary of the Congress’ Katwa unit, alleged that BJP workers were behind the incident, but the latter’s rural district secretary Sandip Nandy denied the party had any role in it.

A bust of Jan Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee was vandalised on March 7 in Kolkata by seven persons, including a woman.

Statues of Lenin, social reformer Ramasamy Periyar and that of B.R. Ambedkar were vandalised in Tripura, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh respectively in recent days.