Youth lynched on cow theft suspicion

A panchayat samity member of the TMC has been accused of orchestrating the lynching of a youth at South 24 Parganas on Tuesday. The incident comes at a time when the Trinamool Congress is facing allegations of intimidating Opposition workers across Bengal.

While the police said that 24-year-old Kaushik Purakayastha was lynched by an irate mob at Diamond Harbour in South 24 Parganas, the victim’s family said that the mob was egged on by Tapas Mullick, a member of the local panchayat samity from Trinamool. Local villagers lynched Kaushik on suspicion that he was a cattle thief, when he was reportedly observing a cow from close quarters.

Kaushik, who hailed from Barasat in North 24 Parganas, went to spend a few days at his maternal aunt’s at Diamond Harbour, after passing out of an ITI institute.

Initially, when the villagers held him, Mullick demanded Rs 1.5 lakh from his family to release him and also asked him to sign a bond of Rs 60,000 for eyeing the cow. When Kaushik refused, Mullick asked the mob to beat him up. In the ensuing pounding, Kaushik was severely injured and he was left by the side of a field.

After hearing about the attack on Kaushik, his parents rushed to Diamond Harbour and the family took him to a state-run hospital in Kolkata, where the youth succumbed to his injuries, mostly to his head and chest.