Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who is currently in Milan, Italy for a business meet, on Saturday claimed that goons hired by the RSS and BJP fired bullets during a clash between school students and police on September 20 in North Dinajpur’s Islampur area.
She made the statement in reference to September 20 violence in West Bengal, in which two people were killed and 14 others were injured when a mob clashed with the police over entry of newly-appointed Urdu teachers in a school in North Dinajpur district.
“Police didn’t open fire at the students. RSS and BJP-hired goons opened fired at the students and killed two of them. I strongly condemn this and I have asked the police to identify those masked men who opened fired at the students on September 20 at Islampur’s Darvit High School,” Banerjee said in Italy.
The BJP has called for a 12-hour shutdown in the state on September 26 to protest the killing of two men.
Alleging that the BJP tried to create communal disturbance in the state during Muharram, Banerjee warned the party to not “play with fire”.
“I will not tolerate ‘danga’ (riot) in Bengal. I would like to warn BJP-RSS not to play with fire. I would like to urge people of Bengal not to fall in the communal trap of BJP-RSS. They are instigating people, youths, students in the name of religion. It was a pre-planned conspiracy to trigger a riot on Muharram day. They instigated students not to allow the Urdu teacher to join the school and were told not to raise any objection to Sanskrit teacher. Howcome students knew the details of teachers’ appointment?” she said.
Banerjee is on an official tour to Europe from September 16 to 26 in a bid to bring foreign investors to West Bengal.
Meanwhile, the Bengal RSS challenged the state government to prove the allegations and demanded an unconditional apology within 24-hours – if failed. “The allegation made by the chief minister is false and baseless. We are also demanding CBI probe in to the matter,” Jishnu Basu, RSS’s General Secretary in South Bengal, said.
State BJP president Dilip Ghosh, who announced bandh on September 26, said that the state government should pay Rs 20-30-lakh as compensation to the families of the two deceased students.