Kolkata: Two days after the murder of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Manish Shukla in West Bengal’s Titagarh, a news channel on Tuesday accessed the CCTV footage of the shocking incident.
The CCTV footage from the area shows Manish Shukla, a councillor of Titagarh Municipality in North 24 Parganas district, being shot at by motorcycle-borne assailants on Sunday night on Barrackpore Trunk Road (BT Road), just a few metres from the area police station. Five rounds were fired.
Manish Shukla can be seen falling from the white car in the visuals. It is being reported that Shukla was always accompanied by his own security men, however, they were nowhere to be seen on Sunday night. The BJP leader also possessed a licensed weapon for self-protection. However, since the license was procured from another state, the Barrackpore Police Commissionerate had confiscated the weapon last month.
It has also come to the fore that there have been attempts on Shukla’s life earlier as well.
As per the preliminary post-mortem report, three bullets were recovered from Manish Shukla’s head. Several injury marks were also reportedly found on the victim’s body.
In a significant development, probe into the murder case of Manish Shukla was given to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Monday afternoon. A team of CID officials visited the site of the crime last night. Two people have been taken into custody so far.
Meanwhile, the BJP workers had yesterday blocked roads in various parts of West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district as part of the 12-hour bandh in Barrackpore to protest against Shukla’s murder.
Traffic was completely halted on major road stretches such as Barrackpore-Barasat Road and Kalyani Expressway after the party activists burnt tyres.
In the meantime, BJP’s newly-appointed national vice-president Mukul Roy, national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, and other senior leaders visited Titagarh to meet Manish Shukla’s family.
“It is extremely shameful that the ruling Trinamool Congress has now started such politics of violence. We demand a CBI inquiry into the matter,” Vijayvargiya told reporters.
Notably, Manish Shukla was with the TMC before joining the BJP in 2019.
