CID chargesheets Trinamool leader in Diamond Harbour lynching case

KOLKATA/DIAMOND HARBOUR: CID has submitted its chargesheet in the Diamond Harbour lynching case that took place at on May 9 earlier this year. A student Kaushik Purkait was lynched to death after it was alleged that he had stolen a buffalo kept aside for sacrifice during a puja.
CID sleuths have named local Trinamool leader Tapas Mullick along with 12 others in the chargesheet and charged all of them under murder.The chargeheet was submitted at the ACJM Court in Diamond Harbour.
The chargesheet mentions how men close to Tapas who had detained Kaushik claiming that since he was wearing a black T-shirt and talking over phone as he was leading the buffalo theives’ gang. Within minutes, news reached Tapas about the detention. It was he who ordered Kaushik to be brought before him at the fields adjoining the local club. For the next one hour, the student was mercilessly beaten up by those present under instruction and presence of the Trinamool leader. Everything and anything lying around was used for the lynching – bamboo sticks, wooden frames of abandoned benches and even torches.
Almost one hour after Kaushik was dragged along near the club, members then called his mother and asked her to give an undertaking and Rs 1.5 lakh in cash. The shocked mother – Chandra Purkait – kept pleading with Tapas and his men even as her bleeding son lay in front of her. The “negotiators” finally settled for Rs 60,000 but by this time Tapas knew there was something that had gone horribly wrong with the son.
All this while, for about two and a half hours, the boy was left on the floor, unconscious and profusely bleeding and Tapas finally allowed the boy to be kept taken to Diamond Harbour hospital. When doctors told Kaushik’s parents that chances of survival was slim and that he needed to be shifted to a Kolkata hospital, Tapas and his aide slipped away. They headed straight for his in-laws residence at Sarisha and from there to Falta and Budge Budge. With the police, close on his heels, he went off to Ashoknagar from where police got hold of his new SIM number and finally tracked him down with help from the Duttapukur police.