By A Newsman

Kolkata, 20 September: A small time vendor on the southern fringes of Kolkata has been beaten up allegedly by Trinamool workers for declining to subscribe the party’s mouthpiece Jago Bangla.

The assaulted vendor, Gopal Naskar, who also happens to be the secretary of Baishnabghata-Patuli Upanagari Bazar Hawker Sangram Samiti on EM Bypass, has lodged an FIR at Patuli police station over the incident that took place on Monday night.

Naskar said that on Monday afternoon a group of Trinamool workers came to him at the Baishnabghata-Patuli Hawker market and said that the hawkers would have to subscribe the party’s Bengali mouthpiece Jago Bangla.

When Naskar told them that for this he would have to consult other officer bearers of the hawker committee, the Trinamool workers got angry and forcibly took him to the Trinamool office at ward number 110.

“They then slapped me saying that I was stopping the sale of Jago Bangla amongst the hawkers and made me sign a white paper,” he said. “Two of our women hawkers were also assaulted when they tried to intervene when I was being whisked away.”

Police are yet to arrest anyone for the assault on Naskar and his co-hawkers. The Trinamool councillor Arup Chakrabortry, on the other hand, has denied that any Trinamool workers have carried out such an assault on the hawkers at Baishnabghata-Patuli Hawker market.