 Gunshots rang out in close proximity of West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya's official residence in Kolkata yesterday throwing policemen into a tizzy. Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee is particularly embarrassed because it is the second time criminals have struck so close to Bhattacharya's home. Obviously, the CM is not the target this time or before but recurring violence in a sensitive zone has left Mukherjee red-faced.
| And no cross-fires either time! |
Yesterday, two rowdies exchanged fire near Bhattacharya's residence over the division of booty. One of them had a narrow escape as the bullet grazed him. Earlier, the officer-in-charge of Karaya police station was shunted after a hoodlum shot his rival within a furlong from the apartment block where the CM lives with his activist wife, Meera Bhattacharya, and their daughter.
"Ya cain't shoot me here, the CM lives nearby!"
"Oh yeah?" *BANG* [THUMP]
"Rosebud! ..." |
A senior home department official told Khaleej Times that instructions were issued to Kolkata police to sanitise the area around Bhattacharya's residence. The police top brass was apparently told that any outbreak of violence near the CM's home sends the wrong message to common people in Kolkata and elsewhere in West Bengal. "We told them (the police) to pull up their jsocks. We specifically ordered a crackdown on criminal gangs operating in the area. But our instructions were not carried out", the official said. As if shoot-outs were not bad enough and they're not, Rs300,000 was stolen in a daring theft barely 300 metres from Bhattacharya's house last month. The theft hogged the headlines for obvious reasons. But the case is yet to be cracked. |