By A Newsman

Hooghly, 01 April: CPI-M leader and former Mayor of Kolkata, Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, has been assaulted at Goghat in Hooghly district by a group of people allegedly led by Trinamool workers.

Bhattacharya, who is also a famed lawyer practising at Calcutta High Court, was shoved by the angry people and his mobile phone was thrown away near Goghat’s Ullasnagar More around 1 pm this afternoon.

The former Mayor was on his way to Bhabha Dighi at Goghat leading a delegation of Save Democracy, to discuss providing legal assistant to the villagers opposing filling up of a lake for laying railway tracks. Save Democracy is an anti-Trinamool pressure group.

A 30-odd group of people stopped their cars at Ullasnagar More and said that the Save Democracy delegation would not be allowed to go to Bhabha Dighi. Some policemen from Goghat police station was present at the spot but did little to make way for the delegation to proceed further.

“They blocked our way by placing some women at the front and police standing by them. The men in the group started by hurling expletives at us and eventually took to physical assault. They shoved me left and right and threw away my android mobile phone even as police remained a mute spectator,” Bhattacharya.

CPI-M’s woman activist, Bharati Mutsuddi, who was in the delegation said that the former Mayor has suffered injuries in his back.

Because of the blockade and assault, the Save Democracy delegation was forced to return to Kolkata from Ullasnagar More. On their way back, they went to Goghat police station and lodged a written compliant naming Trinamool workers for the assault.

Trinamool MLA from Goghat, Manas Majumdar, claimed that the agitation was organised by family members of those killed in the past by CPI-M workers. “Trinamool has nothing to do with the assault on Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya. The martyrs families did this since he is CPM leader,” he said.