Murder case accused found dead in canal

A man, who has been booked in a murder case, was on Sunday found dead in a canal in West Bengal's Hooghly district, a senior police officer said. The body of 40-year-old Kashinath Ghosh was fished out of a canal at Kota village in Goghat block and a probe initiated in the case, district Superintendent of Police (SP) Tathagata Basu said.

A section of Trinamool Congress workers claimed that Das died due to over-consumption of alcohol even as the BJP activists demanded that his post-mortem be conducted in Burdwan to avoid tampering of the report. Goghat's TMC MLA Manas Majumdar said that Ghosh was a former TMC worker, who joined the BJP on May 23.

"He died following overconsumption of alcohol," Majumdar maintained. BJP's Arambagh organizational district president Biman Ghosh, however, refuted the claim and said, "If he had died due to the consumption of liquor, why were his hands tied, and what about the injury marks on his head?" The SP refused to comment on the matter.

According to locals, the saffron party workers staged a protest as police recovered Ghosh's body. Ghosh was among the list of 27 people booked for the murder of Lalchand Bag in neighboring Nakunda village on July 22, another police officer said. TMC district president Dilip Yadav had claimed that Bag was a TMC worker. Yadav also alleged that Bag was killed for leading party workers to the July 21 Martyrs' Day rally in Kolkata.