CPM leaders killed Falguni, says accused

BURDWAN: Trinamool Youth Congress Burdwan district president Bikash Choudhury, who is one of the 14 accused for the murder of Falguni Mukherjee, the bidyut karmadhyaksha of Burdwan zilla parishad, has claimed that Durjodhan Sar, CPM's Katwa zonal secretary, had planned the murder. Choudhury is absconding at present.
A former congressmen, Mukherjee was known as an upright leader.Talking to TOI from a hideout on Thursday, Choudhury alleged that just 15 to 20 days before his murder, Falguni had taken three bold steps against his own party leaders, which had earned him the party's wrath.
First, he had caused the arrest of the son of CPM leader Mehboob Zahedi for stealing power for his ice-cream factory and fined him Rs 6 lakh; secondly, he fined party leader Nimai Ghosh for stealing power for two submersible pumps; finally, he got CPM gram panchayat member Sadak Seth arrested for keeping transformers stolen from Mongolkote in his house, Choudhury said.
"I demand a CBI probe. He and I should be made to undergo lie detector tests to unveil the truth. Sar and other top CPM leaders planned and killed Falguni, fearing that the corruption in the party would be exposed. At the same time, they wanted to nip the growth of Trinamool Congress in the bud, which is why they implicated us on a false charge," Choudhury alleged.
The Trinamool leader also questioned why police have not yet seized the murdered leader's cell phone and why sniffer dogs had not been brought to the murder site. "The house of Shib Kumar Dey, who has lodged the FIR, is 4 km away, at Shibpur. How could he then be a witness?" he wondered, adding that he himself was at Mangalkote police station at the time of the murder.
"Let CBI and CID probe the case. Let them probe the call details on mine, Falguni Mukherjee's and Durodhan Sar's phones and find out the truth. I am innocent," Choudhury said.
Sar said the charges brought against him were baseless. "We are satisfied with the police probe and do not favour a CBI probe," he said.