Three lynched in West Bengal

KOLKATA - Three people, earlier associated with the Trinamool Congress, were lynched Friday in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, police said.

“Three people have been killed in the Nabagram area. We suspect that Trinamool Congress supporters are behind this killing,” Birbhum’s Superintendent of Police Rabindranath Mukherjee said.

Mukherjee said that the victims were earlier associated with the Trinamool Congress.

Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) sources, however, claimed that the three were earlier party members, but later expelled.

“They then got associated with the Trinamool Congress, but returned to the party-fold recently. As they started becoming active, the Trinamool-backed hooligans forced them out of the village. They were asked to return to the village for an amicable settlement and when they returned they were killed,” the sources said.

But the Trinamool denied the allegations.

The violence, occurring two days after the declaration of the civic poll results, has thrown the state government into a tizzy. A large number of people, mainly political activists, were killed in clashes after the Lok Sabha polls last year.