West Bengal civic polls: 20 journalists, camerapersons beaten up

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One of the assaulters shouted at the trio — “Ekhon chhobi tulte eshechish? Choutirish bochor dhore dekhte pashni? (You have come to take pictures now. Didn’t you see what was happening for the last 34 years)”.

At 10.22 am, a call was made to Commissioner of Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate Jawaid Shamim for help.

He said his officers would reach Karunamoyee Housing Estate within minutes. While no one arrived till 11 am, a text was sent to him.

He again called back to assure that help was on its way. However, by then, the offenders had left.

As many as 17 other mediapersons from different media houses were assaulted.

At 9 am, Sanjay Chatterjee of The Telegraph was beaten up at Ward 33, when he went there to take photographs of a booth jam. An hour later, journalist Arka Dey and cameraperson Dipankar Jana of News Time were assaulted at Ward 21.

Around noon, reporter Aritrik Bhattacharya and cameraperson Partha Sarathi Chakraborty of ABP Ananda went to gather news about an alleged booth capturing by “outsiders” in FD Block. The two were attacked with lathis, rendering Chakraborty senseless and Bhattacharya bleeding.

Two other reporters of the same channel — Mayukh Thakur Chakraborty and Prakash Sinha — and their cameraperson Ajay Das were also manhandled.
While at Bidhannagar, Atirath Ghosh and Suraj Prasad of ETV were roughed up, another journalist of the same channel, Tuhin Das Chandra, was beaten up at Bally.

Three journalists of 24 Ghanta — Mintu Basak, Debararti Ghosh and Bikram Das — were assaulted at Ward 33 when they went there to gather
news about an alleged booth capturing.

At 1.30 pm, Sharmin Begum of Kolkata TV was detained by hooligans while her cameraperson Tanmoy Dutta Biswas beaten up.

Souvik Dey, a reporter with the Anandabazar Patrika, was also beaten up.

State Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim visited some of the injured journalists at the hospital. He claimed: “It was not Trinamool that had brought in thousands of outsiders at polling booths and beat up journalists. Senior leaders of CPM had brought in these people. They had kept them in their garages for the night before unleashing them on the people.”