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KOLKATA: A local Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader was shot dead when he was returning home in Bengal’s Bankura district late on Monday, police said.
Police said Sikandar Khan, president of a polling booth unit of TMC, was killed in the Sonamukhi area. He was shot multiple times in the back and the head outside Chakai village when he was on his motorcycle.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee took up this issue at a meeting with senior bureaucrats and police officers at Nabanna, the state secretariat, on Tuesday afternoon and asked them to be more vigilant.
Khan is the ninth TMC functionary to have been killed across the state since July 10, triggering political tension in the run-up to the 2026 assembly polls. TMC leaders have accused the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) of the murders. In several cases, the family of the deceased has blamed TMC’s internal squabbles for the crime.
Sikandar Khan’s family said his murder was the fallout of a dispute over the share of funds allotted for a new drainage line. “There was a quarrel over the share of funds earmarked for the drainage line,” Khan’s sister Noor Alamin told local reporters in Bankura district.
TMC’s district unit president Subrata Dutta, however, alleged that Nasem Khan, an alleged criminal, committed the murder. Police has not been able to track down Nasem Khan yet but has detained his two sons for questioning.
“Patronised by the BJP and CPI(M), these criminals have been creating trouble in this area for quite some time,” Dutta said.
Once a CPI(M) bastion, the BJP won the Sonamukhi assembly seat in 2021.
BJP MLA Dibakar Ghara said: “Look around Bengal and you will see TMC leaders and workers getting killed by their own people. The opposition doesn’t figure anywhere. Sonamukhi used to be a peaceful place. TMC has imported the culture of violence seen in districts such as Malda and Murshidabad.”
Kuntala Roy, the pradhan of the local TMC-controlled Dawaguri gram panchayat, lost his son Amar Roy on August 9. Amar was killed in a crowded market in Cooch Behar district. At the time, Kuntala Roy blamed infighting in the TMC for the murder.
“I will not spare anyone if I don’t get justice,” Kuntala Roy told TMC’s Cooch Behar Lok Sabha member Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia when he visited the family to condole Amar’s death.
