Kolkata:
The gruesome murder of Sourav Choudhury, a young college student who took on liquor and gambling dens in his village, has sparked anger in West Bengal.
The 21-year-old's body was found on Saturday morning, hacked to pieces, on the railway tracks near his village about 30 km from Kolkata.
His family's demand for a CBI investigation met with a controversial response from the state's ruling Trinamool Congress. "Is the CBI so trivial? Can we have a CBI probe if a dog bites a buffalo?" Jyotipriya Mallik, the state's Food Minister, said on Sunday.
A local criminal has been arrested, but the main accused, Shyamal Karmakar, who allegedly controls illegal liquor trade in the area, is missing.
Sourav, a second year student, had reportedly led protests that had forced many liquor dens to shut shop.
His family alleges that he was called out of his house by a group of people led by Shyamal Karmakar late on Friday night. When the family could not find him for hours, they went to the police.
"I saw a few people dragging my brother away. They were Shyamal and 3-4 other people, there was Anup. We searched for him everywhere, along with the police, but could not find him. In the morning someone asked us to go to the railway tracks, we found my brother's body there," Sourav's brother Sandip said.
The Trinamool Congress and the opposition BJP both claim close links with Sourav and are rivalling each other in allegations.
Soon after Sourav's body was found, local residents blocked the train tracks and a major road, forcing the police to use batons to disperse the crowds. On Sunday, the BJP called a 12-hour shutdown to protest the killing.
The Mamata Banerjee government has been fighting allegations of rising political violence in the state.
The Left alleged that those behind Sourav's killing were patronized by the ruling party. "These forces under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee are thinking no can stop them," said CPI-M leader Mohd Salim.