Tripura village deserted after clash

AGARTALA: West Chandrapur village near the India-Bangladesh border in North Tripura district on Monday turned into a deserted rural hamlet as all the villagers shifted elsewhere following a clash between BJP and CPM supporters, police said.

Four persons were injured, 15 motorbikes and a car were gutted during the clash on Sunday, police said.

No one has been arrested or detained in the incident so far but police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in the village, said Milan Dutta, officer-in-charge of Dharmanagar police station.

"We went to the area for investigation, but not a single person was found in the village. They fled from the village immediately after the clash," Dutta told reporters. He added that the residents might have taken shelter in neighbouring villages.

The BJP on Monday filed an FIR against 21 people for allegedly attacking their activists and supporters when they had gone there on Sunday to campaign for the upcoming rural polls.

Panchayat elections in the state would be held on July 27 for which filing of nominations began from July 1.

The saffron party has blamed CPM for the clash, while the Left party termed the allegations as "baseless".

Deputy speaker of Tripura assembly Biswabandhu Sen alleged that the BJP workers were attacked by the CPM workers during campaigning for the rural polls. He claimed that four of his party supporters were seriously injured and shifted to Silchar , about 150 km from Dharmanagar, for treatment.

Alleging that the BJP supporters were exerting pressure on CPM activists to withdraw nominations, the Left Front convener Bijan Dhar said the saffron party activists had attacked its party office and supporters on Sunday. PTI