Howrah: A Trinamool mob allegedly led by Howrah mayoral council members drag out a general manager of Howrah Public Service Unit (PSU) of Burn Standard and beat him up on a busy road, opposite the Howrah police Headquarters.
Reportedly, the GM Santanu Sarkar and DGM Sushanta Bhattacharya who came to rescue him got no help from police and had to run for their lives.
The incident has come just days after a British delegation called on CM Mamata Banerjee to explore investment opportunities in the state which is being said to tarnish Bengal's business image too.
To mention the background of the incident, the INTTUC-affiliated labour union was known to be on a hunger strike for last one week demanding re-hiring of 175 workers laid off by a contractor who quit due to fall in wagon orders. The agitation was led by one Gopal Bhattacharya who was an employee of the Burn Standard.
On Wednesday, Bhattacharya lead the agitation at the behest of Trinamool leaders and sent an SMS to mayoral council members.
Soon after, within minutes, MMiCs Gautam Chowdhury, Santanu Banerjee, Shyamal Mitra and Howrah municipal chairman Aurobinda Guha rushed to the factory and barged into the GM Santanu Sarkar's office.
Later, as told by Sarkar to Times of India daily over phone, the men dragged him out of the chamber where agitators were sitting and slapped him.
He said, “Some TMC men entered my chamber at 3.30pm without appointment and started abusing me. A man who identified himself as an MMiC asked me to go to the agitators and tell them what plans I had for them. When I said a solution will take some time, he dragged me out of the chamber to where the agitators were sitting. He slapped me and said I had no business there.”
Seeing the GM being manhandled, when DGM Debashis Bhattacharya rushed to rescue him, he was also heckled and shoved around.
Sensing that the mob might get out of control both of them ran for their lives and reached company's corporate office in Kolkata.
They laid low for hours until Howrah OC Tathagata Pandey got in touch with the GM.
While the two officials were recuperating from the traumatic state, MMiC Gautam Chaudhary filed a police complaint against the GM's security men. And, much later DGM Debashis Bhattacharya filed a complaint against Chowdhury.
Currently, police personnel have been posted at the factory gates.
Apparently, the tension had been brewing since 2013 when railway orders started drying up the nationalized wagon-making unit due to which the contractor hired by the Burn Standard refused to work at low prices and eventually left.
As a result, 175 contractual workers under him were laid off. Since then the Trinamool-affiliated labor union has been negotiating with the management of the unit to get a new contractor in place and bring back the 175 workers.
