Agartala, Sept 16 (UNI): After attacking opposition leaders, media houses, journalists and professionals, BJP cadres in Tripura on Tuesday allegedly assaulted a Tripura Civil Service (TCS) officer posted as Block Development Officer (BDO) of Poangbari in Sabroom South Tripura.
Police arrested five persons on Wednesday morning for their involvement in the attack. They were produced in a local court seeking police remand for a conclusive ending of the investigation.
The TCS officers’ association has demanded assurance of their punishment. Chief Secretary Kumar Alok has also condemned the attack and had directed the police to arrest the accused persons immediately in Twitter handle tagging ruling BJP and the chief minister.
The TCS officers, however, had threatened to go for a pen-down strike unless the culprits are punished. However, the victim officer Vaijayanta Sarkar is stated to be out of danger and he was released from the hospital at night after medications.
Allegedly, a group of BJP workers assaulted Sarkar along with nine other government employees including Police personnel while they were holding an administrative camp in Madhab Nagar village to verify the records of the beneficiaries of Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY).
According to the report, a group of ruling party cadres stormed the camp and demanded modification of the beneficiary list, as they argued the beneficiaries were selected by the previous government based on the socio-economic survey 2011. As a result, the beneficiaries mostly belonged to CPI-M because the then government did not enter the name of non-CPM beneficiaries.
However, BDO refused to entertain any inclusion or omission of the name and claimed that the list was finalised by the department of rural development and was sent to the block for final verification to start the work. Sarkar said Madhab Nagar village was sanctioned 320 priority list out of which 170 were still pending for registration and they organised the camp to verify the list and complete the process.
The miscreants assaulted the entire team, including the BDO, and snatched away the police batons, mobile phones of the BDO and damaged mobile phones of other staff. Later, SDM Debraj Debbarma and SDPO Lalhim Malsom had rescued the injured officials from a school building.
In spite of lodging specific FIR against three state-level BJP leaders and submission of photographs and videos of five other miscreants who had ransacked media houses in the city and injured two journalists in public, police have not yet arrested anybody.
