Three persons were held in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in connection with the murder of an aide to West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, PTI reported on Monday.
The persons were apprehended by a Special Investigation Team set up to probe the killing of Chandranath Rath. He had been shot dead near Kolkata on Wednesday.
The men were identified as Vishal Srivastava, a resident of Bihar’s Buxar district, Mayank Mishra and Vicky Maurya, the newspaper reported.
Mishra and Maurya are from Uttar Pradesh, PTI quoted an unidentified officer as saying.
It was unclear if the three had been arrested.
The investigating team had been sent to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh following inputs based on technical surveillance and digital tracking, the news agency quoted an officer as saying.
The police suspect that at least eight persons were involved in the killing of Rath.
The motive for the murder was unclear.
Rath was killed amid widespread political violence in West Bengal after the Bharatiya Janata Party defeated the Trinamool Congress in the Assembly elections.
He was travelling in a car to his home in Barasat when assailants on motorbikes intercepted the vehicle in the Madhyamgram area at about 10.20 pm. One of the suspects reportedly approached the car and fired three bullets at close range, it had been reported at the time.
Rath, who was seated next to the driver, sustained several bullet injuries and was declared dead after being taken to hospital. His driver, Buddhadeb, was seriously injured.
Rath had worked with Adhikari for several years and handled political coordination and organisational work. He had reportedly been associated with the BJP leader since 2018 and later became his executive assistant after Adhikari became Leader of the Opposition in West Bengal.
Adhikari, who became the chief minister on Saturday, was not with Rath at the time of the attack. The BJP leader alleged that it was a “pre-planned murder”.
The Trinamool Congress had condemned Rath’s killing and expressed grief over the deaths of party workers in separate incidents of violence across the state. The party alleged that “BJP-backed miscreants” had been involved in post-poll unrest and called for a court-monitored Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the killing of Rath.
Edited by Tanya Shrivastava
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