The police on Friday arrested a local Trinamool Congress worker in connection with the lynching of 24-year-old Kaushik Purakayastha at South 24 Parganas district in Bengal.

An irate mob had lynched Kaushik, wrongly identifying him as a cattle smuggler, 5 days ago. The arrested TMC worker, Tapas Mullick has been charged with orchestrating the youth’s killing.

Mullick, a local panchayat samiti member, is accused of instigating the crowd to beat Kaushik after he refused to be extorted.

Mullick was arrested on Friday morning and produced at a local court, which remanded him in police custody for 14 days. Kaushik was lynched on evening of May 9, when he had gone to visit his aunt’s house near Diamond Harbour in South 24 Parganas. An ITI student from Barasat in North 24 Parganas, he was visiting his aunt after clearing the annual exam at a technical institute near his home.

Mullick, who absconded soon after Kaushik’s death, was among the 10 persons Kaushik’s parents named in an FIR, which they lodged after the youth succumbed to his injuries at a state-run hospital in Kolkata on May 10.

After beating him severely, the mob had left him unconscious at a field from where his aunt’s family members rescued him and informed his parents. After his body was brought back to his aunt’s house, angry locals went on a rampage, ransacking the houses of the accused and setting ablaze Mullick’s residence.

A senior district police officer informed that Mullick was arrested from Duttapukur in North 24 Parganas on late Thursday evening, when he was trying to escape the police’s clutches in a car driven by Biltu, one of his close associates.

The police have detained Biltu for further questioning. According to Kaushik’s parents, Mullick led the mob that entrapped Kaushik and demanded Rs 1.5 lakh from him for “stealing” a buffalo, which was found roaming around later that evening. When Kaushik refused to sign a bond of Rs 60,000 Mullick put before him, the Trinamool worker egged on the missing buffalo’s owner and others mob to beat him.

With Mullick’s involvement, the situation soon turned political as leaders from the Opposition parties, CPM, Congress and BJP, went and met the youth’s parents, trying to make the best of the situation. Opposition leaders, who called for Mullick’s arrest, accused the police of dragging its feet because of Mullick’s link with the ruling party.