Kolkata, The Bharatiya Janata Party activists put up road and rail blockades in the Barrackpore Lok Sabha constituency and laid siege on offices of police superintendents and deputy commissioners across West Bengal in protest against alleged police assault on party MP Arjun Singh on Monday.
Singh sustained a head injury on Sunday in a clash with police in Jagaddal area. He claimed that Barrackpore police commissioner Manoj Verma had hit him with a cane on his head, but the police rubbished the allegation and claimed he was hit by a brick thrown by one of his supporters.
As part of the protest, the saffron party called a twelve-hour bandh in Barrackpore constituency disrupting road and rail traffic at many places.
Senior BJP leaders took part in the gherao of the offices of the SP and the DCs.
There was a scuffle between police and BJP activists at LaLlkuthi as also other spots where the BJP activists forcibly tried to break barricades.
A few BJP cadres and police personnel sustained injuries.
The agitators managed to halt the Naihati Chinsurah ferry services due to the demonstration.
“Singh is in a hemodynamically stable condition at present,” said a hospital spokesman.
According to eyewitnesses and locals, the incident sparked off in connection with the capture of a political party office in Shyamnagar.
After Singh won the Lok Sabha contest from Barrackpore, a number of Trinamool Congress party offices were captured by the BJP, and a violent turf war was still going on between the two parties in the area.
Singh and his loyalists headed to the spot after coming to know that one of the party offices captured by the BJP had been recaptured by Trinamool.
They removed the Trinamool festoons and claimed to have recaptured the party office.
Clashes broke out between the BJP and the Trinamool and Singh’s car was vandalised and its windshield broken. The BJP workers started protesting on the road, thereby triggering clashes between them and the police.
